The Beat of Black Wings
by BlackIceWitch
Summary: 10th story in Ramble On series. 2011 (S7). Maybe too much had happened, too much had changed. Maybe what'd seemed too good to be true probably was. After seeing Cas, Ellie returns to Sioux Falls to give the Winchesters the ritual they need to bind an out-of-control angel, and finds that all her efforts to put the past behind her have failed. No slash. No spoilers.
1. Chapter 1 That Was Then

**Chapter 1 That Was Then**

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><p><em>There's this place in me where your fingerprints still rest, your kisses still linger, and your whispers softly echo. It's the place where a part of you will forever be a part of me.<em>

_~ Gretchen Kemp_

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><p><em><strong>Sioux Falls, South Dakota, June 2012<strong>_

Under the bite of the early summer sun, the yard was dusty and still and hot, the mess the demons had made of the black car showing up all too clearly in the pitiless glare.

Dean wiped his face, tucking the mostly-clean rag into the back pocket of his jeans as he walked to the bench in the workshop's shade, picking up his beer, now tepid and almost flat, and swallowing a mouthful, his gaze moving over the boxes of tools that covered the bench's surface.

"Can you fix it?"

He looked around as his brother walked slowly toward him, Sam's eyes on the car, his expression doubtful.

"Yeah, with some time," he answered, swallowing another mouthful and lobbing the empty bottle into the trashcan by the shed's side wall. "Nothin's so broke it can't be fixed."

Sam reached the shade, turning his head to look at his older brother. "You believe that?"

"Yeah," Dean said quietly. "I do."

He picked up the socket wrench and walked back to the car, spinning the tool idly between his fingers. The car had been fucked over worse before this. He would be able to put it all back together and make her beautiful again. He leaned on the frame, looking into the engine bay without seeing it. His brother – his brother might be another matter. But time would help Sam, he thought. Time and being off the job, out of it, for a while.

"Think Cas'll give us any time?" Sam asked, and Dean exhaled, the question too close to his thoughts.

"Nothing we can do about Cas," he said, not turning around.

"Dean –"

"Sam, I gotta work on this," Dean cut him off. He knew Sam wanted to talk, needed to talk but he couldn't face up to that conversation right now. So much had happened in the last few weeks, he couldn't think of any of it, didn't want to go near any of it.

"Right," Sam said softly. "I'll, uh, leave you to it."

"Yeah."

He forced himself to look at the roof, to ignore the quiet shuffle of his brother's footsteps as Sam returned to the house. If he could get the worst of the crimps and folds out of the damned thing, he thought he'd be able to beat it out straight again. But not the way it was now.

The screen door slammed in the distance and he let out the breath he'd been holding. His brother had somehow managed to integrate the memories he had of being trapped in the pit, but he was fragile. More fragile than Dean'd ever seen him. He wanted to get Sammy talking about it, get the feelings that surrounded what'd happened to him out where they couldn't keep poisoning him, he did. He just wasn't sure he could take it. Hearing it. Reliving it with his little brother. And he wasn't sure Sam could either.

His fingers closed hard around the wrench. The angel that'd fractured Sam, that'd caused all of this, was running around like a demented tin-pot god, killing randomly. And there wasn't a fucking thing they could do about it.

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><p><em><strong>THEN. January 16th 2010<strong>_

Putting the phone handset back in the cradle, Ellie felt the tingle of alarm as she heard a flutter of wings behind her. She turned around slowly, and saw Raphael's tall, slender form standing between her and the doorway to the bedroom. There was no way to warn him, not without alerting the archangel. The thought flashed through her mind and she struggled to keep her face impassive, her body still.

"Eleanor Katherine Morgan," the archangel's voice was deep and cultured, but cold, the words drawn out like a threat. "Uriel said you were a spoiler. No line of destiny connects you to the world's fate. It really doesn't happen that often."

Forcing herself to watch him, she didn't respond, hoping Dean would hear the archangel and head for the fire escape.

"Not feeling talkative?" He looked away from her, around the room, his gaze scouring from one corner to the other. Behind her, the bottle of Blue Label and two glasses were still standing on the sink, and she shifted her position very slightly to one side to block his view of them.

"No matter, there are ways to help you to help me." He looked back at her. "I understand that you know the Winchesters."

She waited, her thoughts beating frantically at her, in time with the racing of her heart. If Dean stayed in the bedroom, if he didn't hear …

"Where are they?" Raphael's voice held the slightest hint of an edge now.

"I have no idea," she told him flatly, a little more loudly than normal, her voice pitched to carry. "They're hunters, they could be anywhere in the country."

"Yes, they could. But they're not. They're somewhere here, somewhere close. I can't see them, but I can feel it." He took a slow step closer to her. "You can tell me now, willingly and free of pain, or you can tell me when your mouth is filled with your blood and your organs are steaming inside of your body. I'm feeling in a generous mood this morning and that is your choice. But you will tell me."

Licking her lips nervously, she looked at him. "If I knew exactly where they were, I would tell you – I have no desire to become the scratch toy of an archangel, Raphael."

His eyes narrowed suddenly, his expression malevolent. "Why are you persisting in these lies? Even loyalty can only go so far."

Ellie felt her muscles tense. Castiel had mentioned that Raphael had a very small tolerance limit. She had the feeling she'd reached it. From the bedroom, there was a faint click and she felt her stomach sink as the glass door opened and Dean walked out.

"Sam's tracked omens to –" Dean stopped halfway into the room, looking past the archangel to Ellie, his face smoothing out as his gaze flicked back to Raphael.

Raphael slowly turned his head to look at Dean, and a smile stretched his mouth, a reptilian expression as cold as his eyes.

"So, you've been deceiving me," he said, glancing back to Ellie. "Uriel was right. You are a meddler, wildcard. But not for much longer."

"Raphael. No hard feelings about the oil, I hope." Dean took another couple of steps into the room, drawing the angel's attention.

There was holy oil in her backpack, a small bottle, enough to make a circle if she could get to it, she thought, watching the angel twitch at the man's insouciant comment. The bag was on the other side of the room, slouched in the armchair where she'd dropped it. At least three seconds, probably five to get to the bag, she thought, breathing deeply to oxygenate her muscles. Another ten minimum to find and get out the bottle –

"Castiel will pay for that, in time." The archangel looked back at Dean. "You, I can't touch. At least … not yet."

He swung back to Ellie, lifting his hand and she recognised she was out of time. "But you, you have meddled in our business enough."

"No!" Dean shouted, accelerating toward her. Ellie lunged to the side and felt her feet root to the floor, her body held in place as solidly as if she'd turned to stone. The archangel didn't even turn to look at him, his focus on her, but from the corner of her eye, she saw Dean lifted off his feet and flung to the other end of the long room. He hit the wall with a crash of breaking plaster, bringing down a painting as he fell to the floor.

"Dean! Get out! Get Sam and get out of here," she yelled, fighting to move, her gaze on the palm of Raphael's hand, her efforts doubling when she saw the centre lighting up, aglow with a fierce blue-white light.

"No! This is not fucking happening! Ellie–!" Dean rolled to his feet, heading back toward her.

There was a flash through the room, as brilliant as lightning, and the beam increased, flooding outward from the angel. Ellie realised she could no longer see Dean or the archangel, screwing her eyes almost closed as heavenly incandescence blanketed her. Trust in God, she thought, lifting her arm over her face. There was nothing else to do, no one else to call on –

"Castiel!" she cried out. He came for Dean, Sam'd told her. Sometimes when Sam called, but always for Dean. She hoped he'd come now.

"Castiel cannot help you," Raphael's voice was distorted beyond the wall of fierce brilliance, thickened with contempt.

"No, but he _will_ take Dean far from your reach," she spat back at him.

Throughout the room, things began to shake and rattle in their places, the building itself humming then resonating at the frequency of the light, rumbling and creaking as the luminescence spread out, continuing to intensify, bleeding the colour from everything it touched. She couldn't see Cas or Dean beyond it, couldn't see anything, but she heard Dean's shout. She screamed at Castiel to take Dean out and get Sam, get them both to safety.

Surging with the power drawn from the souls of Heaven, unable to change the focus without losing control and destroying more than the meddling woman in front of him, Raphael turned his head as he felt his brother's presence, seeing angel and man disappear within feet of him. Rage filled him, as incandescent as the molten energy flowing through his essence and vessel, and he poured it out at the woman who'd been a party to ruining all their plans, uncaring of the way the building was groaning and shuddering.

Ellie ducked her head, arms crossed over her as she heard the windows blow out one by one. Then the noise and chaos vanished abruptly. In her mind, she listened to a voice, not really a voice but something, something that spoke to her quietly, not in words, but in intent.

One wall of the building exploded and the room was filled with wind, concentrating the unbearable smell of scorched metal for an instant then whipping it away. She thought she heard the gunning of an engine, off in the distance.

Souls held the power of the universe, Katherine had told her once, the memory coming back as the voice faded away. The archangel had been channelling a lot of them, she thought, letting her arms fall and straightening slowly as the light died beyond her closed lids. The wind blew through the suite and she opened her eyes, seeing Raphael's hand drop to his side as the power dissipated.

He'd expected to see a pile of ash where she'd stood. She thought he looked very surprised to see her whole, upright and intact. She could understand that, she was pretty damned surprised herself.

"That's impossible." Raphael stared at her, fury warring with disbelief, his face finally animated by the all-too-human emotions. "No mortal can stand against my power."

The smile she gave him was dry. "Hubris is a sin, Raphael. I expect you know that."

He lunged toward her, and was stopped, his body held in place, his eyes widening in shock as he fought to move and couldn't.

"Don't look at me, I'm not doing it." Ellie told him with a shrug, picking her way through the debris and shards of broken glass that littered the floor. "Perhaps you should check first, before telling everyone that your Father is dead."

As she came alongside him, she turned to look into his eyes. "You cannot kill me," she told him, her voice hard and cold as she studied him. She could see from his reaction that it was true. Something had touched her, in the middle of that light. And the archangel could see it. "And you will not harm the Winchesters or Castiel. That's a message from God."

Walking past him to the armchair where her bag lay, she wondered if that was true, as she picked the backpack up by the strap and shook it to dislodge the glass and rubble from it. She couldn't imagine who else might've been able to stop the angel's wrath from destroying her. She slid the strap over one shoulder, and walked to the door. Not much hope of getting her deposit back now, she thought as she hurried down the stairs. She had to get a long way from here.

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><p>Raphael was released when the door slammed shut. He slumped forward, looking around wildly. God was dead, he'd told Winchester. Dead and vanished. Nothing could have protected the woman from the power of Heaven. Nothing but …<p>

Under the moan of the wind through the bare structure of the building, there was a muted flutter of beating wings and he was gone.

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><p>When she reached the street, Ellie turned left and walked the next block to her truck. Throwing her bag into the seat and climbing into the truck, she got the key into the ignition, twisting it hard and starting the engine. She slid an arm over the wheel, her forehead resting against it when reaction kicked in, shuddering through her so strongly she couldn't keep a grip on the key.<p>

What had just happened, she wondered shakily, recognising and ignoring the fear that was trying to get out from behind her mental walls. An archangel had just thrown his best Heaven-pulled whammy at her and she'd survived? No one survived that.

But she had. The memory of the not-voice was already fragmenting, dissolving, becoming more and more vague as she tried to drag it closer. Within the high-pitched, painful frequency of the light, it had surrounded her, somehow, blocking everything out but what it had tried to impart to her. A message. A warning. A sense of – what? Compassion? Understanding? Sympathy? None of them were right and she let out her breath in a frustrated exhale, dragging another deep one in to counteract the trembling in her muscles.

Dean and Sam were hidden but far from protected. She had the feeling that whatever it was that had kept her from being killed by Raphael, it'd made her a lot more visible to everything else, her memory of Raphael's reaction vivid in her mind's eye. The realisation brought a sudden twist of pain. Not now, she thought, forcing another breath through the constriction in her chest. Not _now_.

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><p>Pulling out and turning south, Ellie headed for Missouri, driving out of the town and through the countryside for three hours before she pulled off into a long lay-by, sheltered by trees.<p>

She got out of the truck, shivering in the damp air, and reached back into the cab, dragging a jacket from her bag and zipping herself into it.

"Castiel? Cas? Can you hear me?" Ellie wrapped her arms around herself as she waited, wondering if he'd even respond to a prayer from a stranger, with Dean no longer in need of help.

The soft sound of wings and the scrape of a shoe on gravel had her spinning around, her gun in her hand, although, she thought later, it couldn't have done anything.

Castiel stood a few feet from her. "How is it possible?"

"I don't know. You could ask your Father, Cas." Ellie smiled humourlessly at him. "Are they safe? Did they get away?"

He nodded, his gaze cutting aside, looking up and down the county highway. "Dean is very unhappy."

Taking a deep breath, Ellie nodded. He would think she was dead, and even when Cas told him she wasn't, he wouldn't be happy with the next bit either. "I know. I want you tell him that I'm alive. That I'm alright. He needs to know that at least."

Castiel looked back at her. "Do you want to go to them?"

Staring at the flat fields that bounded the highway, she tried to remain objective about the situation. The truth was she did, more than she wanted to admit to, even to herself. She wanted to feel his arms around her, and look into his eyes, and know that out of everything that had happened, in her life and his, something had begun between them, something that felt important and true.

_But._

She shook her head. "No. Raphael found them because he could find me," she said to the angel. "It doesn't matter how careful I am. They could be found again. It was risky before, but now …" she trailed off, the look in archangel's eyes returning to her again. "I'm easy to see – now – aren't I?"

Castiel nodded. "Yes. You are clear – and bright," he said, his head tilting a little. "What happened?"

"Something gave me a message," she said slowly, trying to recapture the detail of the moment. "And a warning. And something else."

"Something?" Cas asked, his expression intent as he leaned forward. "What kind of something?"

She opened her mouth to tell him, then shook her head, turning away. "I don't know. Not really. I thought –"

"You thought it was God?" Cas finished, his dark blue eyes widening.

Ellie shrugged uncomfortably, trying to dismiss it. Was it really likely that God would speak to her? Personally save her? Not so much. "Maybe. I don't know."

She looked away. "I just know that I can't take the risk of leading whatever's hunting them straight there. So," she added, turning back to him. "You have to tell Dean I won't be back. Not until Heaven and Hell have stopped hunting them."

"I can protect you, Ellie. Hide you from angel view," the angel said. She bit her lip then nodded at him, and Castiel took a step closer to her, lifting his hand.

He laid his hand against her side, over her ribs, closing his eyes. Ellie looked down at his hand, then up to his face as he frowned.

"What's wrong?"

"It's not … I cannot affect you." He opened his eyes and looked at her. "It's not working."

"Because of what happened."

"Yes. If it was … I believe so," he said. "Whatever protected you from Raphael's attack, it's … touch … is still there. I don't think an angel could harm you now. But …" He drew in a deeper breath. "I think … we can all see you."

Ellie looked down at the ground, feeling the implications of that hitting her, one after the other. She wouldn't just be easy to find, she thought. She'd be visible no matter how she tried to hide. And that would make her a danger to others.

"Castiel, you have to make Dean understand that I can't go anywhere near them until Lucifer is dead or back in the cage, and Michael has stopped looking for him." She hesitated for a moment, wondering what his reaction would be to that. Their beginning had been so short. Maybe it mattered more to her than to him. "Can you tell him I love him? That –"

That what, she wondered? That she'd wait? That she wanted him to wait? What if the waiting was too long or got too hard? What if he didn't want to wait? She looked up at the angel and shook her head.

"I'll try," Castiel said uncomfortably, his gaze shifting to her truck. "Where will you go?"

She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. So long as I'm far away from them, they'll stay safe." She wrinkled her nose at the blatant untruth of that statement. "Well, safer anyway."

Digging in her coat pocket for the keys, she turned for the truck.

"Ellie," Castiel called out, striding abruptly to her side. Looking at him, she was surprised to see his eyes filled with emotion. "Is God alive?"

"I don't know, Cas," she said, thinking of that voice in her mind. Not a voice. Not even a feeling. But some kind of intent. "I think I wouldn't be here if he wasn't. You either," she added, remembering what Dean had told her of what had been done to the angel in the past.

"Where is He?"

"I don't know that either," she said honestly. "But that's never really mattered, has it?"

The angel stepped back as she opened the truck's door and settled herself in the driver's seat. "Cas, please … tell Dean I'm sorry."

He nodded and vanished, and she started the truck, wondering what the hell she could do to keep the attention of any angel who might be watching her far away from the brothers.

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><p><em><strong>NOW. June, 2012<strong>_

Ellie stood looking at the church. "Lady of Serenity Church" the sign proclaimed. Castiel had been here. He was getting hard to keep track of, despite the news reports that seemed to be flowing across the country.

She sighed and walked back to the white pickup. As she drove out of the town, she saw a public garden near the river. She pulled over and walked under the stone arch into it, breathing the cool, morning air in deeply.

Looking around at the mature trees, gowned in their summer growth and a thousand different shades of green, at the tended beds of rioting flowers, she felt a little of the peace of the place seeping into her. For what felt like half her life, she'd spent time in the old churches, places of worship, shrines and tombs and altars where the stones and timbers had drunk in human emotion and reflected it back. She knew the power of those places, but she sometimes wondered if people understood that open spaces, filling with perpetual life, could hold the same full emotions, could give the same comfort.

If he was still in the vicinity, she thought, it was a place that an angel might like.

"Castiel?" She looked around, her gaze tracking through the open grounds. "Castiel, can you hear me?"

It hadn't worked the last twenty times, of course, but that was no reason to give up now. Purgatory had been opened. Millions of souls had come out. Been subsumed by an angel, she'd heard through the mixed grapevine of hunters and those on the periphery of the hunting life. Rumour. Speculation. Confirmation finally from a psychic down south. The news reports had begun and she'd seen him.

"Ellie."

She turned around and felt her eyes widen as she looked into his face.

"Oh, Cas, what've you done?" she breathed.

The angel looked ill. His skin was white and grey, pouched in places, unnaturally shadowed in others. The clear, dark blue eyes she remembered were bleary, bloodshot and heavy-lidded and he couldn't keep them still, his gaze flicking from side to side.

"What do you mean?" He seemed to struggle to concentrate, his eyes crossing as he forced them to focus on her. "I am the new God."

"Are you?" Her gaze swept downwards, seeing the bulging of his torso beneath the blood-spattered white business shirt and beige trenchcoat. "You're burning out your vessel, Cas."

"I know. I will heal it when I'm finished."

"You can't assimilate those souls, Cas. No one could."

Purgatory, Seb had told her, held the souls of monsters, condemned to their choices of life-everlasting and bloodlust for eternity. But Purgatory held other things as well. Creatures from other dimensions, distant ones. And the first beasts. Voracious experiments that had been considered a failure and locked away, according to the oldest biblical texts. "Cas … there are things that are not souls in you," she added uneasily. "You have to get them back into Purgatory. They'll kill you."

"No. God is dead. I am the new God and I can handle them."

"God isn't dead, Cas," Ellie said to him sadly. "I told you that."

"That was … a long time ago, Ellie." He looked at her, and for a second, his gaze cleared, she could see he was really seeing her. "I prayed for guidance, that I was doing the right thing. I prayed to Him for a sign, that He heard me, that He still cared."

He turned away. "There was no sign."

"Cas, he's not dead." She stepped toward him.

"Then why didn't He stop this? Why didn't He stop me?" Castiel spun around, his voice rising. "_Thou shalt have no other gods before Me_; yet here I stand."

She looked at him. "You're not God, Cas."

The angel stared at her and she watched his face twitch with emotion, her breath catching as a shadow moved under his skin. He was trembling, she realised, seeing the coat's collar shaking a little against the bloody stains on his shirt. For a long moment, he seemed to be gone, then expression returned, slowly smoothing out as he came back from whatever impossible state his mind was in.

"Tell Dean –" Castiel began, and Ellie frowned as his expression drained away into vacancy once more, his eyes paling and almost empty. She started slightly when they abruptly locked onto hers, suddenly much darker. "Tell him not to rise against me. I am content to let them live if they do not betray my goodwill."

He took a staggering step closer to her, his gaze fixed as his expression lost animation again and his eyes seemed to grow distant. "But if they do, I will destroy them. Do you understand?"

She looked at him and nodded.

He disappeared.

Oh, _crap_, Ellie thought as she sank on the bench behind her. It was a lot worse than she'd imagined.

Along with the souls, the angel had clearly taken in the creatures who'd been imprisoned in Purgatory and her sketchy knowledge of those monsters, just from Seb's quick phone call, was enough to make her realise that unless someone could convince Castiel to return them to Purgatory and lock them away again, the world was going to be in a lot of trouble.

She closed her eyes. She was going to have to see them. She was going to have to see _him_.

The thought brought a mass of conflicting emotions. Elation and anxiety, desire and fear, a marrow-deep sadness and a longing she couldn't bear to acknowledge, churning nauseatingly in her stomach. She'd tried to bury what she'd felt. Tried to drown it out with work, with research, with hunts that had sometimes bordered on recklessness. None of it had worked. And he was the only one who had a chance of getting through to the angel, the only one to whom Castiel might listen.

Even if he could, she thought, it wouldn't be enough. Penemue had explained the nature of the angels' power – of Heaven's power – and of Hell's. Holding the souls within his vessel, Castiel was a walking reactor, a power sink of unimaginable force. Dean would need something … or someone … to bind the angel, keep him from detonating.

She'd kept tabs on what they'd done, and where they'd been, this past two years. Most of the time it'd been a torture she'd repeatedly told herself she could do without. That rational approach hadn't stopped her from checking in with the hunters she knew they saw, from time to time. She thought she'd made her peace with everything that had happened. But as the emotions stormed away behind the too-thin walls she'd erected around them, she could see that clearly she hadn't.

Exhaling softly, she got to her feet, following the narrow concrete path out of the garden and walking slowly to her truck.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Three days later. Richmond, Virginia<strong>_

The basement room had been a steadily expanding library for as long as she'd known the Macdonalds, two stories under the ground and the plaster on the walls not hidden by shelving, showing the excavations where objects and protective bags, wardings and sigils had been inserted and covered over. The floor-to-ceiling shelves covered most of the walls, filled to capacity with books that were beyond old, some beyond ancient, tattered covers and mildewed pages waiting patiently to be restored. Some of them, she knew, would never be restored. Their contents were irreplaceable but the miasma of evil that leaked from them meant that no one could work on them safely.

"He's taken the souls of Purgatory and the creatures that lived there," she muttered, half to herself as she stared down at the yellowing pages in front of her. "What's going to be strong enough to lock him down?"

Sebastian looked at her, one overgrown grizzled brow rising. "What makes you think anything is strong enough?"

"Yure –" Ellie started, cutting herself off as Katherine came down the wooden stairs, carrying a tray of cups and a pot of black coffee and putting on the table.

"Yure and Kasha are optimists," the tall woman said, pouring the aromatic brew into the cups. "Patrick called earlier," she added, taking a cup for herself and sitting at the table next to her husband. "He got hold of John."

"Really?" Ellie reached across the table to take a full cup. "I thought he'd – well …"

"Apparently not," Katherine said. "He's been in hiding, according to Patrick. I didn't get the full details. He said the only thing that's going to be able to stop the angel is God."

"Well, we can't exactly call for an appointment." Ellie frowned as she sipped her coffee. "And that's not true anyway," she added, keeping her gaze firmly on the table. "Death has the power as well."

Seb's gargantuan snort sent the unswallowed coffee in his mouth and throat spraying across the floor as he turned from the table, the snort becoming a hacking cough and his wife pounding on his back while she looked at Ellie disapprovingly.

"Death!" Seb said, when his airways were more or less clear again. "You're joking!"

Ellie shrugged. "He has the power over every living creature. He can hold Castiel, keep him from exploding until the doorway can be opened again."

"And how do you imagine you'll convince that entity to help?" Katherine enquired frostily.

"Everything has a key," Ellie said, looking down at the book on the table. "You told me that. An opposite, a binding force."

"The only binding force I ever heard of for the Pale Rider was the one Lucifer used to keep him on a leash when he brought him back to this plane," Seb said, his tone repressive. "No one – and I mean _no one_, Ellie – knew where he'd gotten it."

"Probably Heaven," Ellie speculated, picking up her cup. "The question is – where did he leave it when he was done with it?"

"What!?" Katherine stared at her. "You can't possibly be seriously thinking of trying to find a spell to bind the Horseman. It's preposterous! Unthinkable!"

"Very thinkable," Ellie said. "And possible. It's just –"

"Goin' to be impossible!" Seb snapped, moving closer to Katherine, the two of them unconsciously drawing together to provide a united front.

"No," she said firmly. "Just not easy."

"Ellie," Katherine said, trying to unclench her teeth and drawing in a deeper breath. "Even if Lucifer had kept that spell, where do you think it would be?"

"He didn't leave anything up here," Ellie said, glancing at her. "So, probably in Hell."

"Right!" Seb pounced on the word. "In _Hell_. Where there's a new ruler and a new regime and a horde of demons, as pissed as the angels that their visions of paradise were stomped on and wrecked, all of 'em looking for someone to kill to make 'em feel better. Impossible."

It wasn't even close to impossible, Ellie thought, though she knew why the two of them were trying to convince her it was. She had rituals for opening the gates, had everything she needed, collected and stored at her apartment four years ago when she'd thought she'd have to go in there to get Dean out.

The new ruler of Hell was, according to the demons she'd interrogated six months before, a crossroads demon. Nothing more. A human-born, crossroads demon that had somehow wrested control of the accursed plane from the archdemons without so much as an argument and had been running it ever since.

Not that she could take him lightly, she considered, hands wrapped around her cup as she swallowed. Crowley had a powder-keg temper and he'd almost caught her once. He had the power of the souls in Hell at his command. However she did it, it would have to be in a way that no one ever suspected a thief had been in and out.

"Did Patrick ever find the old documents, the ones about the angel histories, in the Vatican vaults?" she asked, looking up over the rim of her cup at Katherine.

"Not that he told us," Katherine said, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Why?"

Ellie waved a hand in a vague gesture. "If anyone knows how to circumvent Death's decisions, it'd be the angels, wouldn't it?"

"You think you can get an angel to control Death?" Seb asked, his voice filled with disbelief. "To take down another angel? Lucifer was cast down for ideas like that."

Shaking her head, she put her cup down and closed the book on the table. "No, although from what Castiel was saying, it can't be any better in Heaven under his stewardship than it is here," she said. "Penemue said that the angels had gone into Hell."

"A lot of people have gone into Hell," Katherine told her sharply. "And never returned."

"And some have," she pointed out, getting to her feet. "I've got to go. I'll call at the end of the week, see if you've found anything else?"

"Where are you going?" Seb got to his feet, glancing at Katherine as she rose slowly as well.

"LA." Ellie picked up her backpack, slinging the worn strap over one shoulder. "Told Iain and Fionnula I'd see them while I was on the coast."

"What's in Los Angeles that can't wait?" Katherine asked, arms folded over her chest in an interrogatory stance.

"Pick up. One crate of holy oil for Andreas and Alyssa," Ellie said, smiling disarmingly at her as she turned for the door. "You want anything delivered to Fionnula while I'm over there?"

The couple exchanged a glance. "Yes, you could take Nonna's quilt with you and give it to her," Katherine said, following her out. "She's been asking for it."

"No problem."


	2. Chapter 2 The Beat of Black Wings

**Chapter 2 The Beat of Black Wings**

* * *

><p><em><strong>A week later. Bear River, Utah.<strong>_

The small fire was almost invisible against the bright sunshine filling the wide river valley, and Ellie added another handful of dry, brittle twigs, watching them blacken and curl under the beaten silver bowl that rested over the coals. She watched the contents of the bowl through the heat shimmer above it, seconds ticking away in her mind.

"_When you get in there, you won't be able to see the demons, unless they're also in a meatsuit." _

The exorcist's voice, low and serious as a heart attack, intruded into her thoughts.

"_You only want the first level," he'd told her. "Once you get past the gates, there's a mountain. It's hollow, filled with caves, and that's where it'll be."_

She closed her eyes, letting a shiver run through her without trying to stop it. It wasn't her first rodeo, she reminded herself. Her chest was itching, where the blood sigil had dried and crusted and she resisted the impulse to scratch it. There wasn't much that would truly hide her from view but it would help.

The contents of the bowl erupted with a flash of light, a cool mauve that strobed the cliffside and faded away, leaving a thin, twisting ribbon of blue smoke, curling up from the bowl. The incantation was black Latin, and she spoke it clearly, trying to hold herself apart from the way the words seemed to fill her mind with images she'd rather not have seen.

_Magic isn't inherently good or bad_, she'd told Dean once, the two of them sitting on a river bank with the mountains rearing up behind them. _It's a tool, a key to the subconscious, and that's all_. She'd revised that opinion in the last two years. There were some magics that could corrupt. And some, she thought, that could redeem.

The grinding of the rockface pushed thought and memory aside, and she looked up as the recessed slab moved outward, spilling a painful dark red light onto the ground. _Don't think about it_, she told herself, slitting her eyes as she got to her feet. She watched the gate open, the weight of the stone crushing the gravel scree at its base to powder, then reached down and threw several handfuls of coal onto the fire. She'd need a few hours and the door would only remain open while the mix in the bowl was heated. A lesson learned from painful experience.

Stepping into the pulsing not-quite-light, Ellie dragged in a deep breath. From the gate, there was a plain to cross, then she had to get through the inner gates. Then she could search the inside of the mountain.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Sioux Falls, South Dakota.<strong>_

"You got any bright ideas yet?" Bobby asked, leaning on the side of the car and looking down at the pair of legs protruding from under it.

"Yeah, I got a million," Dean's voice was muffled with his proximity to the oil pan. "What about you?"

"Nada," Bobby admitted, moving aside as the creeper edged out from under the chassis. "Here."

Dean slid out, taking the proffered beer and sitting up. "Any more reports?"

"Yeah, tv's all over it," Bobby said with a grimace. "Tulsa, Austin, Birmingham … Cas' gettin' around."

His gaze shifting to the house, Dean asked, "How's Sam doing?"

"Seems okay," Bobby said cautiously. "All things considered."

"Yeah."

All things considered, Dean thought, lifting the bottle. Twelve hundred years, in Hell's peculiar time, of being chewed over and spat out by the devil and an archangel with a helluva grudge, along with a year and a half's worth of memories of hunting as a cold-blooded machine, soulless, conscienceless and savagely successful. All things _considered_, it was a fucking miracle Sam was on his feet and not curled into a foetal ball in the corner of a room.

He stood up, nudging the creeper halfway back under the car and took a step back, looking over her. The frame was straight and most of the panels were more or less smooth. Black gloss showed every single wrinkle and divot, he knew from past experience. He still had some work to do to make sure there were none to be seen before he could run her into the paint shed.

"There's just one thing that has a hope of holding Cas down," he said to the older man, feeling Bobby's gaze turn to him.

"That is?"

"Death."

The entity – the Horseman – had helped before, Dean thought, staring at the car. Had given him his ring to open the cage. Had gone down to the pit to pull out Sam's soul. The current situation probably qualified as something he might be willing to help out with again.

"An' how do you think you're gonna get Death to come out and play?" Bobby's voice held an astringent tone.

Dean shrugged. He had no idea. The last time he'd gone looking, he'd had to die. He had a feeling that wouldn't work a second time.

_This is hard for you, Dean. You throw away your life because you've come to assume that it'll bounce right back into your lap._

The measured, timeless voice came back to him. He hadn't argued with the Horseman at the time, though he'd never thought that no matter what he did, he'd keep living. That'd come as a total fucking surprise, time after time.

"Lucifer bound him," he said to Bobby, turning to put his beer down on the workbench behind them. "There has to be a way."

* * *

><p><em><strong>I-35N Iowa<strong>_

Ellie felt her fingers tightening again on the wheel, and looked down at them, willing them to relax. She had another six hours driving and she could already feel the knot of tension at the base of her skull as the long drive forced out more and more memories, doubts and anxieties. She wanted to see him. But, she admitted to herself, she was afraid as well. She could, in the most hidden part of herself, keep a tiny flame of hope alive, so long as she didn't know for sure.

When Raphael had appeared in the hotel room, she'd known exactly what he wanted, even before he'd spoken. She'd made it too easy for Heaven. She'd been known to the angels and she'd led them straight to the Winchesters, not thinking she'd be followed or tracked. She'd been thinking of herself, she admitted readily. Wanting to see him. It was a decision that she still felt ambivalent about. They'd had something, the two of them, together. But her being there also driven them apart and had kept them apart for a lot longer than she'd thought.

It was only supposed to have been six to eight months. Just laying low, staying away from them, letting them get on with it. Then one thing after another had gone wrong.

She'd heard things over those first few months, while she'd gone about her business, her time divided between research, hunting and trying to remain hidden from the angels she'd sensed following her, from time to time. Had heard things from hunters. From the demons she'd trapped and questioned. Dean had almost given himself to Michael. Bobby'd told her that, telling her worriedly that she needed to find a way to see him, talk to him, get his head back in the game. It'd been the intervention of Cas that'd stopped Michael from acquiring his chosen vessel, and it hadn't been all that long after, she remembered, that the Watcher had contacted her. Penemue had asked her to get a message to Michael.

The sight of blue and red flashing lights in the rearview mirror dragged her attention back to the interstate. A glance at the speedometer showed her well within the limit and she watched the two patrol cars move up and past her, heading elsewhere. Reaching for the console, she pushed a CD into the stereo, turning the volume down until she could just hear it. A delicate combination of acoustic and electric guitar filled the cab, Metallica's _Unforgiven _bringing back memories so potently she felt her throat close suddenly, tears pricking behind her eyes.

With Patrick's less-than-willing help, she'd managed to find the archangel, tricking him into meeting with her and she'd delivered the Watcher's message. Michael had tried to bargain with her, demanding Dean's whereabouts for his help. He'd put two angels on her tail when she'd refused and from then on, she spent almost all of her time trying to lose them, cutting herself off from anyone she knew who might also know the brothers.

She still wasn't sure if it was bad luck or manipulation that had kept her in almost total isolation when Sam had held Lucifer and taken him back to the cage. Luck came in waves, and hers had been bad for a lot longer than usual.

She'd been in Oregon. Ray had given her three locations to try, sites of massacres, lit up with signs over the previous few months. It'd been the first time she'd used the ritual, but it'd worked. The gate had opened, and she'd crossed between the planes. She hadn't found what she'd been looking for and when she'd come out more than a hundred demons had been in the clearing, dropping on them without warning. At the time, with two angels with her every moment, she'd known she should've been invisible to them, but someone – or something – had known exactly where to find her. Iskmael had died fighting the demons. The other seraphim, Iophiel, had thrown some kind of deflection spell over them both, her proximity to the angel hiding whatever it was that kept her shining like a damned lighthouse, but it had still taken nearly a week to work their way slowly clear of the area, through nearly empty mountain country.

They'd been sixty miles from Burns to the north, a little further to Lakeview to the east when Iophiel had told her that the Cage had closed, Lucifer and Michael both trapped inside it, their vessels with them. He'd blamed her for the death of his brother and had left, leaving the Enochian spell intact around her. By the time she'd made it to Burns, found someone willing to sell her a clapped-out secondhand car and driven to Bobby's, four weeks had passed.

Hitting the stop button on the stereo as the sweet chorus began, she flexed her hands and rolled her shoulders, trying to ease the tension that felt like it was eating her. Four weeks too late had been enough.

Bobby had tried to explain. He'd told her that Dean had waited, first hopefully, then impatiently, and finally had come to believe that she wasn't going to return. He'd told her that Cas had been there, had told them he couldn't see her, couldn't find her. She'd listened to the old man and seen, vividly in her imagination, what Dean might've told himself as the days went by and she never showed.

Turning onto the 90, she barely registered the signs, her hands and feet and eyes driving the truck, finding the route, while her mind looked backward, agitating again over the things that delayed her return to Sioux Falls. If she hadn't tried to find the spell that could release Death from his bond to Lucifer … if she hadn't been followed by angels … if she'd had more luck in the long trek out of the wilderness … if … if … if …

She didn't notice passing into Minnesota, and the straight, fast runs demanded too little from her to keep her mind occupied with the truck or the road.

"_Sam made him promise," Bobby'd said, his face screwing up under the shadow of his cap. "To – uh – go find Lisa, go an' live a normal life."_

_She'd stared at him, feeling her pulse throbbing at the base of her throat, feeling her mouth dry, her chest tight._

"_When did he leave?" she'd asked him._

"_Nearly five weeks ago, Ellie," Bobby'd told her, his voice dropping. "It was the only thing he was hanging onto, by the time –"_

"_He wanted a family, Bobby," she'd cut him off, looking away. "A home."_

"_Yeah," he'd said. "He needs one."_

_At the back of her mind, somewhere, someone had been screaming but she'd damped that down, forced it aside. It seemed obvious that neither Sam nor Bobby had believed she'd be coming back, any more than Dean had._

"_He's in Cicero?"_

"_Yeah," Bobby said, nodding. "But Ellie, he's –"_

_She'd been on her feet, walking for the door, already calculating time and distance._

"_Ellie."_

_The muted plea in his voice had stopped her at the porch and she'd turned around to look back at him, seeing the worry on his face clearly._

"_If he's settled, I won't butt in, Bobby," she'd told him, swallowing against that thought. "I won't confuse the situation."_

_He'd nodded slowly, apparently satisfied. It told her more than anything he'd said that he believed that Dean was adjusting to the new life._

Driving through the night from South Dakota to Indiana, she'd thought, if she could get there in time, he might feel differently. Halfway there, she'd stopped, trying to work out what it was she was going to do when she got there. She'd promised Bobby she wouldn't just show up at his door. Wouldn't disrupt what he was doing if he looked alright. But, she'd thought at the time, if she didn't see him, how would ever know that it hadn't been her choice?

In the end, she'd hired a van when she'd gotten into Indianapolis, and positioned it well enough to be able to watch discreetly without being noticeable to the inhabitants of the small house. Just to watch. To make sure he was alright, to see if he'd found what he'd been looking for. She'd left that first time after two days, telling herself that she was happy that he looked contented, that he had what he'd wanted. She couldn't remember the drive back to Richmond, but she'd packed light and taken the first flight out of the country she'd been able to get a seat on.

* * *

><p>The Welcome sign of Sioux Falls took her by surprise, and she made the lefts and rights automatically, heading out along the county road to Singer's Auto Yard.<p>

Parking the truck a half mile from Bobby's place, she sat there, listening to the hot metal of the engine tick in the silence. She didn't want to see anyone other than Dean. Raphael was dead, and Lucifer and Michael were locked away, but she still had a residual uneasiness about being too close to the Winchesters, a feeling that it was too easy for someone to track them through her.

She opened the pickup's door and got out, closing it quietly behind her, turning and leaning against the side for a moment. Was she really going to walk in there, she wondered nervously? See him? Try to explain … now?

It'd been November when she'd returned to Cicero, finding that they'd moved. It wasn't hard to locate the new house. A few houses up the street, an empty house with a For Sale sign out the front had given her all the cover she'd needed.

Thanksgiving. Watching him with Lisa's family, smiling and laughing easily, his arm around the slender brunette as they'd stood on the porch and seen their guests out. She'd been tempted to leave after seeing that much, but some masochistic streak had kept her there, and she'd watched the lights in the living room come on at two in the morning, watched him move behind the concealing curtains and sit there until dawn. The nightmares, she'd thought then. There were things in his life that couldn't be resolved and let go so quickly. He must've felt the surveillance, though she'd been sure she hadn't done anything to give herself away. He'd come out the next morning, checking the cars and houses and it'd taken all her control to drive away, slowly and casually, and not looking back.

There wasn't a lot to be gained in standing out here and quaking in her boots, she decided, pushing off the truck and starting to walk up the hill toward the yard's lop-sided entrance. She walked slowly, her head down, admitting to her reluctance but unwilling to do anything about it. As she came level with Bobby's yard fence, corrugated iron and chainlink netting, barbed wire wound around the top, she could hear hammering, metal on metal.

She'd run into Gwen Campbell in January '11. Gwen and her cousin, Christian, the two staking out a nest in Lafayette, both jumpy at her appearance, relaxing a little when she'd told them she was passing through, on her way to a haunting close by the state line. Gwen had let slip that Sam had been raised; rescued from the cage only a short time after he'd gone in. The information had hit her like a sucker punch. Dean didn't know, she was sure of it. That night, Samuel Campbell had walked into the bar where they'd been comparing notes. It'd taken a little bit of finessing the cousins, but they'd finally admitted that Samuel had been resurrected at the same time. The juxtaposition of the two events had rung numerous warning bells for her, but she couldn't figure out what the purpose could have been. Only an angel could've pulled Sam's soul from Hell – and returned Samuel's to his original vessel. But which angel had? And for what purpose? And why hadn't that angel released Michael and his vessel, Adam?

When she'd left them, she'd seriously considered going to see Dean then. She hadn't given in to the impulse. Partly because Bobby had told her that Sam had forbidden anyone contact with him, and partly because she agreed with Sam – Dean seemed good. He looked happy. Dragging him back into the life would only have ruined his dreams, destroyed his chance for peace once again.

But, as it turned out, Dean was dragged back anyway.

The sun was hot, the scrubby trees throwing little shade on the powdery ground and she slowed down even more as she turned in under the welded archway. Stopping between the first rows of the heaped junkers, she rubbed a hand over her face, too many memories hitting her all at once.

Bobby'd known about Sam's return. He'd admitted as much when she'd called him, telling her that Dean knew as well now. He'd been targeted by djinn and Sam had intervened.

"_We were wrong, Ellie. He wasn't happy. I didn't … I'm sorry, but I just couldn't tell him you'd come after he'd left. He was pissed at us for not telling him about Sam … I didn't know what he'd do." _He'd sounded regretful, she remembered. A world of regrets in the tired, whiskey-roughened voice. None of it had been any help to her_. "He and Lisa, they're not living together anymore. But he said he was trying to make it work, trying to still be a part of their lives."_

She'd shaken her head._ "Then there's no room for me, Bobby. I'm going out of the country for awhile anyway. I'll keep in touch."_

That conversation had been ten months ago. She'd gone to Paris, then to Rome, working with a witch she'd met years ago on a case. Remy had been only too happy to help her forget her sorrows, and she'd thought, for a short while at least, that she would be able to forget, to put it all behind her. Let him go.

Wrong again.

In the afternoon heat, the yard seemed empty, although she could see Bobby's tow truck, parked alongside the side of the house. A rapid loud banging led her through the alleys of piled cars to the Impala, and Dean's boots, sticking out from underneath it.

She waited until the staccato hammering had stopped, forcing herself to breathe deeply, to loosen the tightness in her throat and around her chest.

"Dean?"

"Uh … hang on –" The deep voice, achingly familiar, grunted from under the car. Watching him emerge gradually as he pushed himself out, Ellie swallowed against the sudden dryness that filled her throat. When his head had cleared the chassis, he looked up. He didn't move, didn't speak.

"Hey." She smiled nervously at him, feeling her heart start to race as she cut her gaze away to the car.

For all her attempts to forget him, to bury her feelings, not one thing had changed. With the bright sunshine on his face, his eyes were a vivid green, the faint smattering of freckles over his nose and cheeks apparent even under the coating of dirt and grease.

"Hey." He sat up slowly, shading his eyes with his hand as he looked up at her. There was no answering smile.

She dropped her gaze as her stomach knotted. "Do you have a minute?"

"Sure." He rolled off the creeper and got to his feet.

"Bobby around?" She looked toward the house. "Or Sam?"

"No, Bobby went to town. Sam …" he hesitated for a moment, and Ellie knew that he didn't want to talk about his brother, or go into whatever had happened to him.

"Uh, Sam's in the house, sleeping." He frowned. "Why?"

"I just wanted to talk to you alone." She shrugged, letting her gaze drift around the yard, struggling to keep her feelings out of her face, out of her voice. "Any place with a bit of shade we can go?"

He turned away and walked to the shed. She followed him slowly.

* * *

><p>"Why are you here, Ellie?" Dean asked, his voice clipped as they crossed the threshold and the temperature dropped in the dim shadowy interior.<p>

"I saw Castiel." She leaned against a work bench, looking down. "He looks terrible. His vessel is going to explode."

"Yeah. Well, he won't listen to reason."

Looking at her face, he found himself studying it, remembering each curve, every scar, fighting to keep his breathing even as memories surged through him, good ones and bad ones. He looked away as she lifted her head.

"He gave me a message for you, and Sam. And Bobby too, I guess. Don't rise against him, or he'll destroy you."

"That's more or less what he told us when he left," Dean said, shrugging. "I don't know what he thinks we're going to do, it's not like we have any weapon at all that can touch him."

"No weapon. No."

* * *

><p>She looked out of the partially open door to the sunlit yard beyond it. It'd been a mistake to come, she realised, hearing the antagonism in his voice. She could have waited until Bobby had been here alone and given him the message, the things she'd found for them.<p>

"But there're still those with enough power to hold him, until the door to Purgatory can be opened again."

* * *

><p>"Yeah? Who?" Dean asked derisively, watching her profile against the brightness of the light from the yard. He was greedy for the sight of her, he could admit that to himself. He wanted to drink in every detail. He was angry as well. And hurt. No, hurt was too fucking tame a word for it. Devastated fitted better. How the hell could she be just standing in front of him, talking to him as if everything was normal? When he'd been waiting for two years to see her again? When he'd told himself he'd never see her again?<p>

"Death," Ellie said, her voice flat as she flicked a glance at him. "The Horseman can hold Castiel."

Dean gave a shaky laugh, dragging his attention back to the conversation. "Sure. Right. You think I didn't think of that? You think I haven't been trying to find a way to get a hold of the sonofabitch for the last two weeks?"

"You need a binding spell," she told him, her expression smoothing out as she turned to look at him. "Crowley had one."

"Crowley? And how're we supposed to get hold of him?" Dean's brow furrowed, his desire to ask her where the hell she'd been getting all this information warring with the million questions he'd wanted the answers to when she'd been gone. "He's been AWOL since Castiel turned into this ... God thing."

He watched her turn away to lift her backpack onto the bench behind her, opening it and pulling out a slender, silk-wrapped cylinder, his concentration involuntarily sharp on everything she did. There was a part of him still standing in open-mouthed disbelief that she was here at all. He'd known she wasn't dead. Had known the only reason she hadn't come back had been from her choice. She'd left him.

"Summoning spell for the ruler of Hell, it's, uh, f-fixed on that parameter, not an individual demon," she said, stumbling a little on the words, her gaze locked on the fabric-covered scroll as she spoke and already turning away when he took it. "I don't know how he managed that, but it seems like it's only in title. All the real power appears to belong to Cas."

Unwrapping the silk covering from parchment scroll carefully, he unrolled it, skimming over the contents.

The summoning was in Latin, the delicate, wrinkled parchment old and fragile, and smelling faintly of brimstone. It looked like the real deal. Glancing back up at her, he wasn't sure how he'd forgotten that she did this kind of thing. Pulled rabbits out of hats. Or how he'd failed to remember that she'd always seemed to know more about any given situation than they had.

"How long you known about this?" he asked, wondering distractedly what Bobby was gonna make of it.

"A couple of weeks."

* * *

><p>Rubbing her forehead and pushing a loose strand of hair aside with the inside of her wrist, Ellie kept her gaze on the interior of the shed. Crowley's sudden ascension to the numero uno position in the underworld was a feat she'd found strange, but it was more than obvious she couldn't raise it with Dean now. She couldn't blame him for the anger she could see, seething under the surface. She shouldn't have been surprised at it, given all that had happened. But she was. Somewhere inside, she'd hoped … she'd kept hoping … well, now she knew. For sure. What they'd had, very briefly, had gone, and they weren't even friends any longer.<p>

She resettled her bag over her shoulder, feeling tired suddenly. She'd done what she'd come for. Given him what was needed. And she'd seen what she'd needed to see. She wanted to go.

* * *

><p>Dean looked over at her as he rolled the scroll back up, tucking it into the pocket of his shirt. There were shadows around her eyes, he noticed suddenly, and she looked thin, tired, her gaze on something to his right, behind him, as if she couldn't look at him any longer. Somewhere, down deep, he felt a rolling lurch in his gut, a sense of walking over the abyss with nothing underneath him but an endless fall.<p>

"Look, uh … thanks for this," he said, the edge gone from his voice. "We'll get on it."

She nodded noncommittally, picking up her backpack and shrugging it over one shoulder. "That was all I could find anyway."

Straightening up, she turned and headed for the door to the yard. "Good luck."

He watched her walking away, and for a long, endlessly drawn-out moment, he couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. _Everyone leaves you, Dean_.

Two years, and he was going to let her go, without an explanation, without the answers she owed him? His heart slammed against his ribs, adrenalin exploding through muscle. Was he really going to let her leave … again … without another word?

The _FUCK_ he was.

He was moving before he'd made a conscious decision, striding across the concrete floor, his fingers closing tightly around her arm as she reached the doorway, swinging her around to face him.

"Wait a - _wait_ a goddamned minute."

He didn't know what the feelings were, boiling up inside of him, anger or fear or grief, it'd been a long time since he'd been able to tell them apart. They were filling him up and he wanted some damned answers. He _needed_ some answers.

"You're just going to walk away … again," he ground out, hustling her backward a few steps and pressing her against the rough timber wall beside the shed door, his face inches from hers. She looked up at him, eyes wide, lips parted in shock.

"What are you talking about? I didn't 'just walk away', I told Cas to tell you –"

"Yeah, he told me," he cut her off sharply, vaguely aware that she wasn't making an attempt to get out of his hold and loosening his grip slightly. He could feel her breath, rapid huffs against his jaw as he looked down at her, could see her pulse, beating furiously in the hollow of her throat.

"He told me that you lived through Raphael's Power Ranger act, but he didn't know how." He dragged in a breath, shunting aside those memories when they pressed close. "I thought he was lying at first, some bullshit story to make me keep going, because you weren't coming back."

_The old farmhouse, the angel's appearance, despair swinging wildly into hope_. His eyes narrowed as he saw her expression change, some emotion filling her face then vanishing. "Then I believed him, and I begged him to find you. I _begged_ and I _pleaded_ with him, Ellie. He said you'd told him not to. Not to find you, not to take me to you."

He felt a shiver tremble through her, reverberating faintly against his fingers, and she ducked her head, twisting a little to one side. The fucking angel hadn't budged an inch, no matter what he'd said or done and had finally left, telling him it was her decision and the only way to keep them safe. _Safe_, he remembered bitterly. They'd never been _safe_ in their lives.

"How come I didn't get a say in that? How could you make a decision like that?"


	3. Chapter 3 This Is Now

**Chapter 3 This is Now**

* * *

><p>Ellie stared at the floor, the weariness vanishing as her temper started to rise, burning with the injustice of his accusation. Had he thought it'd been easy? Just walking away – and staying away?<p>

"The only reason I left was to make sure I didn't lead anyone to you, Dean," she snapped at him, lifting her head and meeting his eyes. "To protect you and Sam from being found by anyone who wanted to kill you, or turn you into a vessel for the Apocalypse. Raphael found you through me. Michael would have found you."

Penemue's request flashed through her mind. The Watchers had needed Michael's help, but it would only come at a cost. The man standing in front of her. Even then, Michael had been confident he'd get Dean eventually.

However she'd survived the archangel's attack, God's touch or fate or some other multi-dimensional manipulator, it had lit her up like a beacon, and she'd been easily visible to every creature from the other planes, the angels having no trouble in following her everywhere. Crowley had laughed about it when he'd almost caught her in Hell.

"Yeah, right. Even after Lucifer and Michael dropped into the cage?" Dean grated disbelievingly, his fingers digging in a little harder again. "Who were you protecting me from then?"

Ellie felt her anger drop away as suddenly as it'd risen, memory bringing pain, sharp and corrosive. Her gaze dropped, and she slumped a little under his hands, seeing Bobby's face again, in her mind's eye, the old hunter's expression screwed up in apology.

"Me."

"You?"

She looked up at him, seeing his confusion and trying to steel herself against the feelings that'd hounded her for the last two years. The last thing she would be able to cope with was letting him see what it'd done.

"Bobby told me about your promise to Sam, after you'd left for Indiana. I watched you fulfil it, Dean," she said, dragging in a deeper breath as she heard weakness in her voice. She'd wanted to walk right up to that door, had wanted to make him see her. But, when she'd watched, when she'd seen him in that life … she hadn't been able to bring herself to do it. He'd wanted a normal life. She'd left, fast the first time, telling herself she could forget him. Looking into his face, she realised she'd been wrong about that too.

Dean's hands let go of her, his arms dropping to his sides as he took a step backward, the raw anger in his face wiped away by shock. "You knew about that?"

Turning away and leaning her shoulder against the wall, she made a small, vague gesture. "I thought that you deserved a normal life. It's what you wanted. You always said it was what you wanted."

She should've waited for Bobby to be here on his own, she thought, turning a little further from him, her eyes closing tightly as she fought to conceal the emotions that were rising too rapidly, closing her throat, tightening her chest, blurring her vision.

"What I wanted?" Dean repeated, his voice deepening slightly. "You were there? You saw – saw me?"

The one thing she wasn't going to do was lose it, she told herself. Maybe they had to go through this … this post-mortem discussion … maybe that was a part of being able to let go, but it didn't have to include how she felt, on display. She opened her eyes, wondering irrelevantly why it was so much easier to hide physical pain than emotional as she turned her head and looked back at him.

"Yeah. I was there," she told him, grateful her voice was no longer wavering. "So, I stayed away."

* * *

><p>Dean stood still, looking at the woman in front of him, his thoughts and emotions a tangle of half-formed and chaotic snapshots, from what he'd thought, what he remembered, what he could imagine.<p>

In the shadowy interior, he could see the gleam in her eyes, making a lie of the cool and closed-off expression on her face. He swallowed against that sight, everything he'd believed, everything he'd figured turning upside down and inside out.

Had she stayed away, thinking he was happy in that ordinary life? She'd seen him … she said she'd been there … he'd felt someone, watching, at least twice … all this time … all this time, he'd thought … he'd been trying to convince himself that she'd betrayed him, had lied to him, had _played_ him … disappearing. Offering what he wanted and vanishing without a fucking trace. Staying gone. And all this time, she'd known where he'd been, had known what he'd been doing, who he'd been with.

He dragged in a deep breath.

"I thought you …" he stopped, the words jamming up in his throat. "I thought you weren't coming back."

Her gaze lifted to meet his briefly. "There didn't seem anything to come back for."

He closed his eyes, his expression tightening. "You were there, in, uh, August?" he asked, trying to remember when he'd had the sense of being watched.

"August, and I –" she faltered, ducking her head. "And in November."

Thanksgiving. He remembered the prickle of his instincts then. He remembered seeing the white pickup cruise slowly from the vacant house and down the street. It'd been her, so fucking close and leaving without even giving him the chance to do anything about it.

"Why didn't you –?" he started to ask, then stopped, his jaw clenching. "Why the hell didn't you show up at the door?!"

She looked up at him, her mouth twisting up in a smile completely devoid of humour. "I wanted to," she told him, a little defiantly. "But … you looked settled. Bobby said you were finally h-happy, and I – I couldn't see anything that indicated you weren't."

"Happy?" he repeated. All of them, he thought with a sharp stab of anger. All of them had looked at him and seen something that hadn't been there. "I –"

Cutting himself off abruptly again, he realised it no longer mattered. "I wasn't 'happy'."

He'd been grieving for Ellie as well as for Sam when he'd turned up on Lisa's doorstep. Grieving and angry, filled with so many conflicting emotions, he hadn't been sure he'd even been sane. But while he'd been able to talk to Lisa about Sam, a little at least, there was no one he could talk to about Ellie. She'd always been the one he'd talked to about the things that were deepest inside of him. She'd been the one he'd trusted with his secrets.

And she'd been there. She'd seen it. He felt that sink into him. He knew that to anyone looking at them, him and Lisa and Ben, they probably had looked happy. Sid sure hadn't been able to tell. Bobby had thought he was out, with the home and family he'd wanted. No one had been able to see inside his mind, inside his heart, to see how he felt when he wasn't being watched.

_I wanted my brother, alive!_

He'd said that to Sam when Sam'd come back, giving him the news that his grief and pain for a year had been for nothing. At the time, he hadn't been able to admit what else he'd wanted, already sure that it'd been her choice to go and her choice to not return. When Sam'd come back, and he'd taken Lisa and Ben to Bobby's, the old man had said nothing about Ellie, and he'd had to accept that was going to be the limit of getting what he wanted.

He lifted his head and looked at her, her gaze back on the yard outside. He could see tension, in every line of her body, in the tightness of her jaw and the tendons standing out in her neck. She looked like there was nothing she'd rather do than walk away, walk out and keep going. The thought shocked him and for a moment, he saw beyond what he was feeling, saw what it must've been like for her.

_Bobby told me … you looked settled_ … she'd been a few weeks too late and he'd been with someone else. Living another life.

"I'm sorry."

She threw a glance at him, then shook her head, her gaze returning to the sunlit yard as she said, "You've got nothing to apologise for, Dean. You didn't know."

There was a faint edge to her voice, but he didn't get the feeling that it'd been aimed at him. His chest was aching, bands of steel compressing it as he watched another slight shiver run through her, trembling the braid down her back.

Why'd it been so easy for him to believe that she hadn't wanted to come back, that she hadn't wanted him, he wondered? _You don't believe you deserve to be saved?_ Cas' voice came back to him and he took a deep breath. He hadn't believed it, hadn't been able to admit to it either. He hadn't believed he'd deserved anything. Least of all what he'd kept a secret, sometimes even from himself.

He took a step closer to her, reaching out his hand, and touched her lightly on the shoulder. She flinched away from the touch, a reaction that made his nerves jump in sympathy.

"Ellie." He looked at her back. The implications were still hitting him, one wrecking ball after another. He'd spent a year with Lisa and Ben, and had been running back to them every few weeks over the year just passed, trying to make it work, trying to salvage something of what he'd thought he'd wanted, a home and a family, mostly making things worse.

"Cas, uh –" his voice was too high and he cleared his throat, trying again. "Cas said you had a couple of dicks on your tail."

She nodded, and he saw her back straighten, her shoulders lift a little with the deep breath she drew in. "Yeah."

"They told you about Sam? The Cage closing?" he asked, feeling his way through the things he wanted to know, the answers he'd needed for too long, and what he thought she might be willing to talk about.

Nodding again, Ellie glanced at him. "Yeah, they told me."

"Did you know Cas raised Sam?"

Her expression twitched, as if it at a memory. "I saw Gwen Campbell, just before I – uh, a few months after – she told me Sam was hunting with them," she said, her gaze shifting away from him.

"Cas didn't pull out his soul," Dean said, wondering at the things he could hear being left out of what she was telling him. Too many things.

"Bobby told me, um, later, about that," she told him, another swift glance showing him nothing of her expression, but the omission clearer than words.

"You know me, Ellie," he said, his voice dropping low. "How'd you ever think I was okay, thinking Sam was in Hell and you were gone?"

She shook her head. "I saw you. And Bobby said you were dealing – and Sam didn't want anyone to contact you, drag you back in."

He laughed, a short bark holding no humour at all. "Yeah. That didn't take too good, did it?"

"If you were so damned unhappy there, Dean, why'd you stay?" she asked.

"Because I made a promise," he said, his voice thickening. "I thought – fuck, I thought it was the only thing left I could do for Sam, 'cause I sure as hell couldn't find a way to get him out!"

She looked up at him, and he caught sight of the gleam again, swallowing hard.

"I'm sorry," she said, her voice small and contrite. "Nothing – it wasn't – I – I'm sorry, Dean."

Under the words, he could hear pain. It was a pain he knew, and he ducked his head, retreating from it.

* * *

><p>He'd made a promise to his brother, Ellie thought, but he'd made one to the woman and boy he'd gone to, as well. When she'd seen him there, standing with them, she'd seen it. A commitment to be with them, to stay with them. That'd been the reason she'd left.<p>

Watching him turn away, she said softly, "I didn't _want_ to disappear, Dean."

He seemed to hear that, stopping where he was and looking down at the floor.

"I know."

Out in the yard, the wind skirled around the dirt alleys, kicking up a short-lived spiral of dust, banging a sheet of loose iron against a metal frame.

He looked older, Ellie thought. The last of the young man she'd first met had gone, buried under responsibility, under pain and loss and decisions that had cost him more and more as the years had gone by. Under the tee shirt, stained with oil and sweat, his body was hard, working muscle, heavy with everyday use. A bit thinner than she remembered, pared down with what'd gone on in the last few months, with worry for his brother, with the betrayal of an angel and the end of the world looming on his doorstep, once again.

A faint flush of heat bloomed through her, sense memories returning and she looked away, forcing them back down to where she'd thought she'd buried them for good. Watching him slide out from under the car, she'd tried to ignore the fact that, for her at least, nothing had changed. All the effort she'd put in over the last two years, telling herself he was gone, telling herself that time would ease the way she felt … she could've saved her energy for something else because when he'd looked up, everything she'd thought she'd locked away had risen through her like a storm.

* * *

><p>Dean stared at the oil stains over the patched concrete floor, his heart irregularly thumping against his ribs, his lungs seemingly incapable of remembering what they were there to do. He couldn't find a way past the thought of her seeing him, living that normal life, hiding who he was, hiding everything.<p>

"By Thanksgiving, I was pretty much at a dead end," he said, glancing across at her, then looking away again. "I couldn't find a way to get Sam out. Couldn't find a way to let him go. Couldn't do anything, but try and make what I was doing – where I was – work, somehow."

He turned around, lifting his head, the same disorienting sense of disbelief hitting him again at the sight of her. She was here. It was, he realised, the third time she'd appeared from nowhere, just stepped back into his life with no warning, when he'd thought her gone forever.

"I wasn't dealing," he continued, taking a step closer. "The first couple of months, I was – uh –avoiding, I guess. Mostly. Then I – I just tried to – uh – adjust."

_Adjust_, he thought sourly. Getting up every night, drinking until dawn, losing himself in memories of the past. The days had been okay. A lot of the time. He'd thought that gradually – maybe – he'd start to sleep more. Sleep better. It hadn't happened.

Cas had stopped answering and Bobby'd stopped calling and he'd never wondered why. Just figured it was their way of leaving him to work out how to live like a normal guy. How to be a normal guy.

He took another step toward Ellie, his gaze fixed on her. If she'd walked to the door, in August, knocked at it and told him she'd made it back, what the hell would've he done then, he wondered?

_Gone with her, without a backwards glance_, he thought, that answer coming immediately. And left Lisa and Ben behind, breaking another promise, one that he'd never said aloud, but that'd been there, all the same. When Sam'd come back, he'd done more or less that exact thing. Lisa had tried to make it work, tried to give him what it'd taken him a year to realise he'd needed, but that still hadn't been enough. He'd tried to do the right thing, for his brother, then for Lisa and Ben and it'd all been screwed up from the word go. Not one of them had gotten what they'd wanted. Least of all, him.

He'd tried to be something he wasn't, in that house in the suburbs. Tried to be what they'd wanted him to be, what he'd seen in their eyes when they'd looked at him. He'd tried to be someone he could never be and the trying had been killing him, slowly but surely, with every lie and every secret and every nightmare.

She wasn't looking at him, her head bowed, arms crossed defensively over her chest. He was close enough to touch her, close enough to see a faint tremble in her frame, shivering a loose strand of her hair against one cheek. Close enough to catch her scent, carried on the warm trickle of wind through the open doorway.

He reached out again, more tentatively this time, his hands curving around her shoulders, his chest tight with the breath he was holding. Turning her to face him, he looked down at her, his chest constricting.

"Why'd you come here?"

"You're the only one Cas might listen to," she said, not looking up at him, her voice indistinct. "You're the only one who might be able to stop him."

"That's not it," he said, his grip tightening a little.

"Don't." She stepped back from him, pulling free and turning away. "Please."

He watched her walk around the Galaxy Bobby had up on blocks in the middle of the workshop, his hands curling up a little, the feel of her still tingling against fingers and palms.

"I can't … not," he said, scowling a little at the admission. She was here and he couldn't ignore her, couldn't pretend that he wasn't feeling what he was feeling, even when he had no idea of exactly what that was. "I thought – I spent the last two years thinking –"

The words dried up in his mouth, and he stared helplessly at the ground as he tried to find another way to say what he meant. Most of the thoughts he'd had about her over the past two years were still raw and aching. He couldn't let them out.

She turned around then, her face expressionless as she looked over the roof of the car at him,. "You spent the last year trying to make it work out with Lisa, Dean. I wouldn't even be here if you'd still been trying."

_Bobby again_, he thought, brows drawing together in frustration. "I tried to make it work out with Lisa because that was all I had left. You weren't here and so far as I knew, that was your choice. Not to come back. Not to –"

How the hell was he supposed to be able to explain how he'd felt? As if Lisa and Ben were all that was left for him, not what he'd wanted but what he'd been allowed to have, and then, even that had gone.

* * *

><p>"You're right," Ellie said, nodding slightly as she turned away from him. "It wasn't my choice, but that doesn't matter."<p>

Watching the way he kept starting and stopping, his emotions swinging one way then the other, she couldn't see a way for them to even disentangle the past. Too much had been lost, over the last two years. Too many things had happened and neither of them could admit that what had seemed too good to be true, probably had been.

"This isn't going anywhere," she continued slowly, looking over the workshop's benches without seeing them at all. Was it relief or agony she felt as those words came out? Was goodbye the only answer now? "We had a couple of nights, Dean. That's all it was."

_And three years_, the voice in her head reminded her quietly, _three years of __learning about each other, relying on each other, trusting each other_. _You're going to lie to him, tell him that what was there didn't mean anything to you?_

It meant too much. It still meant too much. That didn't change the facts, she argued with herself.

"A couple of nights?" he repeated, staring at her before his gaze shifted abruptly away. "So – uh – yeah, that didn't – that wasn't anything, that's what you're saying?"

"What I'm saying is that I can't stay," Ellie said, suddenly realising how true that was. What was there for them, now? The last two years had changed everything, changed the whole world. They'd both changed. They weren't the same people they'd been. Where they supposed to pretend that the last two years hadn't happened? Hadn't cost?

"And you can't go. And there's Sam – and Cas – and a thousand other things that are in the way, even if – even if what we – "

She took a deep breath, closing her eyes and forcing herself to admit it. There was no going back. There never was. The hope she'd held onto had been a lie from the very beginning. "Why go through it all again, pretending it would be the same?"

* * *

><p>Dean kept his eyes locked to the Galaxy, his jaw tight. He wanted to be out of there, wanted to be somewhere else, someplace far away. <em>A couple of nights?<em> Was that all it'd been to her? What she'd said, what she'd told him, had that ever been real? Or had it changed, sometime over the last two years? It had been a couple of nights and … and three years, he thought, wrestling aside his reactions and trying to think. Three years of a slow-growing friendship that had given him more strength than he'd realised, that had changed the way he'd looked at things. And those nights had changed him irrevocably, no matter what he'd told himself, tried to convince himself of in the last two years, those nights had given him hope when he'd been drowning in despair.

It hadn't been a lie, he recognised abruptly. He knew what lies sounded like.

He looked back at her, registering what she was saying … hearing the excuses, and under them, hearing something else. Something he knew.

"Bullshit. I don't buy that." He watched her, pushing aside emotion to look past what she was trying to show him, trying to make him believe. Under the rational-sounding words, he thought she was scared.

"Did you stop loving me, Ellie?"

She looked away, her breath catching in her throat. "That doesn't have–"

"Did you?" He walked to her, cutting her off, his chest tight. "Just tell me."

_Put me out of my fucking misery_, he thought, searching her face for the truth.

* * *

><p>Ellie looked at him for a long moment, wanting to lie to him, to stop the conversation that way. All it would take is one little lie because he was ready to believe what she told him, half-convinced she hadn't wanted to come back at all. She couldn't make the single word come out. There'd never been an occasion when she'd been able to lie straight to him.<p>

"No." She looked down at the floor, wondering why that admission felt like a knife through her heart, wondering why he'd even asked. "I didn't stop loving you."

She heard his exhale, and looked up, seeing his head tip back, his eyes close. The tension that'd filled him a second before seemed to flow out and away, his body relaxing as he stood there.

Had it meant that much to him, she wondered? It hadn't seemed like it, earlier. It had taken her so long to get to this point, and just seeing him again had undone every barrier, every defence she'd put in place. Letting herself hope for more, and losing it again, that would be more than she could deal with. She tried to think logically, reasonably, tried to keep her concentration on the problems. There were too many obstacles. Too much pain in the past for either to live with. It would be too hard. It had been the start of something, maybe, but they'd never had a chance to see where it might've gone. And, she thought, they probably never would. _Then why can't you let him go? Why couldn't you forget him?_

_The question was the answer_, that little voice whispered to her.

* * *

><p>Standing still, eyes closed, Dean felt the tension that had been knotting his muscles, squeezing his guts, loosen and fall away. <em>I didn't stop loving you<em>. It was, he realised, all he'd been waiting for her to say. The only thing he'd wanted – needed – to hear. The tangle of emotions, that he'd thought he'd burned and buried, that had started rising and twisting in him when he'd rolled out from under the car and seen her silhouetted against the sun-bright sky, was making his heart pound, and his breath come short and he tried to focus on breathing, on getting his head clear.

He hadn't known what those feelings were, not really. In some ways, it felt like they'd been there since he'd woken, body aching and half-freezing with the ice lying over the side of his face, over his shoulders, and seen her leaning over him, her gaze on his injuries, the half-moon crescent visible in the neckline of her shirt. At other times, he thought he'd really only felt them when she'd walked out the door of the Manhattan hotel, and he'd let her, too uncertain of what he'd wanted to try to keep her there.

He hadn't understood then why the things he felt contradicted each other, turning him in circles, and he didn't understand any of it any better now. He felt as if he were drowning, sometimes, drowning in a longing for something he couldn't make sense of, couldn't find the beginning or end or edges for. Every time he'd tried to tell himself he'd been mistaken, every time he'd tried to bury his memories, those feelings had jumped right back up, making it impossible to know why he couldn't forget her, couldn't let go. But they were starting to make sense … now.

"It doesn't matter," she told him, her voice unsteady. "It's too late."

_No, it wasn't_, he thought, eyes snapping open, focussing on her. That nervousness he could see so clearly now had been there the whole time, he thought.

"No." He walked closer, stopping in front of her. "No, it's not. Don't say that. Don't you –"

_Don't you understand? Losing you nearly killed me the last time_.

"I can't stay here, with you and Sam."

He felt a frisson touch his nerves as he imagined that, her being here, staying here, with him … it might not be possible, but he swallowed hard against how much he wanted it.

"Too much has happened, Dean," she continued, lifting her face to look up at him. He caught a fleeting expression in her eyes, his heart racing as it seemed to contradict what she was saying. "We're not the same people we were. And you can't come with me. You won't. You need to be with your brother. This can't work."

"You think if you say that enough, it'll make it true?" he asked her, his voice deepening. "Nothing changed, Ellie. The world's as fucked as it was before. I haven't changed that much."

It was and it wasn't true, he thought. But the changes he felt, the things he'd learned, had had bludgeoned into him in the past two years, none of them had impacted him so much that he could give up the one thing he wanted again. If anything, he decided, reaching out hesitantly, running his thumb lightly over her lower lip, absently tracing its shape, that'd only gotten stronger.

He felt her reaction to the light touch, her eyes closing tightly, a deep shiver that ran through her, and into him. He sucked in a sharp breath as a combination of emotion and heat surged inside of him, shaking him, memory, instant and intense and demanding, returning.

"We're not talking about rocket science," he told her, moving a little closer. "We could figure it out."

She didn't say anything, her gaze falling away. Watching her pulse, fluttering rapidly against the thin skin at the side of her neck, he added, "You came back. It wasn't just to hand off the spell – was it?"

* * *

><p>No, Ellie thought, her throat closing. No, she hadn't come here just to give him the spell to bind the demon.<p>

_What do you want_, she asked herself angrily? _You want to spend your life wanting something you tell yourself you can't have? When you know it's a lie?_ He was standing there, right in front of her, wanting what she wanted … and what'd happened, what he'd done, she realised slowly, hadn't been his choice. Driven by grief, bound by a promise, losing hope with every day that'd passed. How could she pretend that was a choice? Anymore than what she'd done had been a choice for her?

She'd been too late and he'd been gone. And when she'd told Cas to tell him what she was doing, she'd known then there was a chance of that happening. Had felt it, like a ghost walking over her grave, a premonition, possibly, of what was to come.

_The question is the answer_.

She hadn't stopped loving him. The question was, did she love him enough to risk everything again?

Perhaps the odds were higher this time, but not trying at all was a guarantee of failure. She'd missed him, so much that every memory had cut to the bone. She'd struggled to forget him, to forget everything about him, and that had failed spectacularly. There hadn't been a single night in the last two years where he hadn't invaded her dreams, slipping in when her armour was thin and her subconscious had tried to tell her the truth.

_There is a reason for everything that is suffered through, a reason for the struggle._

She blinked at the memory, appearing from nowhere, edged with the light of an archangel's power, whispering without words through her mind.

Lifting her eyes to the man in front of her, she wondered if there had been a reason for what had happened to have occurred in precisely the manner it had. More cosmic manipulation of his life? Of hers? He was looking at her, his eyes searching her face for his answers, and she drew in a deep breath, trying to banish her doubt, the uncertainty that was shivering through her like distant thunder. She could tell him the truth or she could turn around and walk away.

"I came back –" she hesitated, swallowing against the tightness in her throat. "I came back because I wanted … I hoped … because … because I couldn't find any more reasons to stay away."

His exhale gusted out, past her cheek, and she looked down, her hands closing around the straps of her pack to keep them from shaking.

"I tried to forget you," he said.

She nodded, understanding that. She'd tried as well.

His fingers slid along her jaw, sending a charge through her nerves, stopping under her chin. She lifted her head with the slight pressure of them, looking up at him.

"I can't – I don't want to have to do that again," he told her, his voice thicker, deeper.

"No." She kept her eyes on his. "This might not be possible."

"I've done a lot of impossible things. This'll be a piece of cake," his voice dropped to a whisper as he bent his head and kissed her, his lips soft on hers, then demanding, his arms going around her, pulling her closer. The charged frisson that had always leapt between them with a touch crackled through her, taking her breath as she leaned against him, dissolving her doubts, mocking her fears.

It'd been a little more than two years, and sometimes, over that time, she'd wondered if her memories of how they'd been together had been unrealistic, polished and honed by an unrequited longing and an undiminishing pain. The kiss deepened and intensified, and she was barely aware of the faint moan that rose from her chest and hummed against his lips, need building as rapidly as arousal, a need that amplified sensation, ridiculed control, reached down and spread up, a wildfire through nerve and muscle. She could feel the heat of his hands, through her clothes, feel the heat of his body, could feel it spreading in herself.

* * *

><p>Dean felt the soft hum against his mouth, and his arms tightened around her. He wasn't asleep, she wasn't a dream, he told himself. Need was outracing his senses, clouding out his thoughts. He was drowning and he didn't want it to stop, didn't want to ever come up for air. For the first time in months, in years, he felt as if he was where he should be. Exactly here.<p>

It didn't matter what fate threw at them, they would figure it out, he thought incoherently. He'd waited too long and it'd been too hard and for once, just once, he needed to have this, he deserved to have this … this woman who knew him, who loved him, all of him, exactly as he was.

"Stay for a little while," he murmured against her mouth. "Please. Stay for a while longer."


	4. Chapter 4 The Truth Shall Make You Free

**Chapter 3 The Truth Shall Make You Free**

* * *

><p>Following Dean from the shed to the house, Ellie wondered if was she entirely sane to be doing this. He looked back at her, his hand closing a little more tightly around hers as if he could feel her doubts, and she met his gaze steadily, lengthening her stride so that they walked up the porch steps together. It didn't matter, she decided, one way or the other. Whatever choices she'd thought she'd had were no longer valid. There wasn't anything she'd ever wanted more.<p>

Inside, Dean turned for the stairs and they made their way up, Ellie looking around curiously when they reached the upper hall. The house was big, but most of it seemed to have been shut off. Dean seemed to know his way around, and she walked along the hall with him, stopping as they reached a closed door at the other end, a grime-covered window looking over the yard and beyond it, the marshes and thin woods.

The bedroom hadn't been used in years, she thought, a big double bed just visible under boxes and crates and bags, holding everything from the overflow of books from downstairs, to pretty china she thought might've been his wife's, to old luggage, heavy and filled with clothing.

"I didn't realise Bobby was a hoarder," she said quietly, moving to the other side of the bed as Dean started to lift the boxes off and stack them against the walls, on top of more furniture and chests and crates that'd been stacked there. Picking up a box of books, she turned and found a place for it on a bureau with an inch of dust coating its top.

"I think he just shoved everything in here and then pretended it didn't exist," Dean grunted, lifting two small crates from the bed and turning to deposit them on top of a big steamer trunk against the wall.

For a moment, Ellie paused, the suitcase in her hand resting on the edge of the bed. It was probably true, she thought. It was exactly what both she and the man standing across the bed from her did with their feelings as well.

"There's a – uh – a closet, about halfway down the hall," Dean told her, arms wrapping around another chest. "I'll get this clear if you want to find some clean sheets?"

Nodding, she set the suitcase on a pile of boxes next to the wardrobe and walked out, wondering distractedly what Bobby would think of them rearranging his house when he got back.

* * *

><p>Dean leaned on one elbow, looking down at her, almost afraid to touch her, afraid that she would vanish like a dream if he reached out.<p>

The afternoon light slanted across the room, striping the room and the bed and their bodies, a golden spill through the slats of the blind-covered window. The dust motes they'd stirred up gleamed and twinkled in the light as they hung in the still air, and it turned her skin from cream to alabaster, lighting the flecks of gold in her eyes, wide open and looking up at him, every lash outlined, their shadows sharp over her cheek. The sheets and pillows were clean and smelled fresh, there was a couple of feet of space cleared around the bed, and the door was locked. It was, he thought uncomfortably, just surrealistic enough to be a dream.

He bent his head and brushed his mouth over hers, the lightest of contacts stirring him deeply, her arms entwining behind his neck, pulling him closer. He'd had a hard time trying to forget the way they'd been together, had wondered sometimes if it could've been as good as the way he remembered it, the way his body remembered it. As the kiss intensified, he realised his memories had been mistaken … piss-poor facsimiles, in fact. In his memories it hadn't been this powerful, hadn't felt like he was stripped bare and defenceless, no control, no armour, no division at all … he hadn't remembered this wild craving, short-circuiting everything but arousal …and something that reached deeper, some secret wish, some hidden need. The feel of her skin, the shape of her lips, the taste of her mouth, the smells that enveloped him, of her skin and hair, the musky pheromones of her desire, the sounds of her breath, of their bodies, sliding like whispering silk against one another, filled and smothered him in sensation, and all of it was too much.

* * *

><p>Ellie shuddered as her whole body responded to him, every nerve ending, every inch of skin. It was, again, too strong, too exposing, her emotions so close to the surface that she wondered incoherently if he could feel them, see them, touch them. Her hands slid over his shoulders, down the big muscles on his back, and he moaned softly, lifting his head and kissing her neck. Turning her head slightly, lifting her arms above her head as he reached the slope of her breast, her muscles tightened in anticipation, her skin on fire at the feel of his breath.<p>

For the moment, the past had gone, vanished into the mists of the endless moment that was right now, right here. The problems they faced, the wounds and scars, the heartache and guilt unresolved, even the house, and Sam and Bobby, were gone, locked out of this world that was only the two of them, making up for everything, making up for the time lost and recapturing what had been briefly awoken.

* * *

><p>He let his tongue run around the sweet-tasting underside of her breast, and slid his hand down her side, fingertips brushing over the scars to one side of her stomach, the small puckered bullet wounds that lay on either side of her belly button, the ridges of the scars that ran from ribs to hip, the twisted line on the outside of her thigh. It was a checklist, all the things his hands and lips and tongue knew about her body, registering faint surprise when he came across something he hadn't seen or touched before. Lapping over her nipple, his arousal reaching deeper with her responses, he let his fingers slip down between her legs, feeling the heat there before they even got close, a corresponding throb in himself triggered by the sensations flickering in lightning strikes along his nerves and concentrated, more and more intensely, between his own. He wasn't going to last much longer if they went too slowly, he thought hazily, as she moved her legs apart and arched against him.<p>

"Dean."

The word was less than a whisper, and he looked up, seeing his need mirrored in her eyes, a silent plea there that he could read too easily, pulsing through him with every beat of his heart.

He closed his eyes as a rush of emotion he couldn't name washed over and through him. Moved a little higher, holding himself above her, her legs sliding up the outside of his, knees against his hips and he ducked his head, a tremor running up his spine, through the muscles of back and shoulders and down his arms, a tremor that wouldn't let him go.

"I'm shaking," he admitted, whisper soft against her shoulder. He'd meant to say it lightly, had meant to lessen the power of the emotions that were rippling through him, but it hadn't come out quite that way. He heard her sharply indrawn breath and a quaver in her voice.

"M-me too."

Her arms slid around his neck, pulling him closer and he felt pressure first, softer than cloud, squeezing him, pulsing along him. Then heat, and he couldn't help the groan that rumbled deep in his chest, or the shiver that goosefleshed his body as her hips lifted beneath his, driving him in deeper.

Memory and feeling and sensation collided and detonated, the impacts rocking him, searing through nerve and muscle, tympanic resonance right down deep in his bones, and behind that, a rising ocean of emotion, infiltrating every cell, the purely physical enmeshed in that tide, indivisibly igniting every touch. Intensifying every breath. Magnifying and focussing every second, his world expanded and narrowed to what he could feel, to what he needed, what he'd wanted for a long time.

He was slamming into her, he realised disconnectedly, ferocious need taking him over, and he tried to slow down, tried to find some shred of control, but her arms tightened around him, she met the violence of his thrusts with her own, the muscles surrounding him jittering and spasming, her breath hot and fast on his skin, all of that telling him that she didn't want to slow down anymore than he did.

There was no way to resist anyway, no way to uncouple what he felt from the conviction of what he needed, what he'd always needed and somewhere, distantly, he knew he didn't want to. It wasn't just pleasure that fluxed back and forth through him, fluttering and contracting his muscles, piercing his armour, leaving him in a building crescendo of reaction, hardly able to draw a breath, his body arching up, shaking uncontrollably as he got closer and closer. He didn't know what else there was, he could only feel as it ramped sensation to a state of exquisite agony, vaporised the control he'd taken for granted all his life. This was what he'd been looking for, what he'd felt missing, what he needed. He couldn't hold on, couldn't hold back and he felt her tighten around him like a fist, her body bowing upwards as his stiffened, muscles contracting violently, the flux of deep pleasure concentrated first inwardly, all of it throbbing through him, then rushing outward, crackling along his nervous system, a high voltage hit lighting him up from head to foot.

* * *

><p>Alight and adrift, held fast in oscillations of titanic sensory eruption, Ellie felt every emotion she'd tried to hide, tried to bury or ignore, rising through her, breaking free and surging out with the physical release. Inside, she was shaking helplessly but she didn't know if that was a physical reaction or an emotional one, her chest heaving as she tried to find air to breathe, tears building behind her eyes, her throat too tight to make a sound. Fear and doubt, grief and desire, anxiety and love and a wild anger were a tangled mess, and he wouldn't understand any of it, she thought, struggling to keep it inside, her body glowing and quivering with the overload.<p>

Closing her eyes tightly, she tried to force herself to breathe through it, past it; to let it wash through her. She loved him, she always had, for too long now to remember the beginning, where it had really started. Maybe it should've been as simple as that, but it wasn't. He had … priorities in his life. Things he couldn't and wouldn't set aside, and she knew that, knew what they were. Even if he felt what she did, even if he wanted to feel that way … every instinct she had insisted that she couldn't show him how much she felt. Not all of it. Couldn't let him see what it had really cost her to stay away.

She felt him start to move, and held him tightly. "Don't. Please. Stay inside me, a bit longer."

It felt too much, too needy, that request, and she turned her head to the side, away from him, the long curtain of her hair slipping over her face. No one else had been able to get to her like he had. She wasn't sure if she'd kept them out, or if there just hadn't been room for them.

* * *

><p>Dean looked down at her, brows drawing together. Her hair was hiding her face, but he could feel the faint tremble in her frame, could see her pulse, beating fast against the thin skin of her neck, and he'd heard the edge in her voice. He shifted his weight onto one arm, lifting his hand and drawing the curtain of bright hair back. The sunlight gleamed on the track down one cheek, glimmered on the tear caught in her lashes.<p>

"Ellie?"

He shifted a little further to the side and she rolled away from him. He looked at the supple curve of her back for a long moment, then slid over next to her, pressing himself against her back, snaking one arm under the pillow and wrapping the other around her waist. The tremble was still there, fluttering in muscle held rigidly tight.

"What-what's wrong?"

"Nothing, it's all-alright." Her voice broke on the word and he felt his elation, all the peace and contentment that had filled him seconds ago disappearing. He curled his arms closer around her, not sure he wanted to know why she was crying, after what they'd just shared.

"It's just reaction, j-just the reactions," she got out, and he closed his eyes, understanding seeping past his doubt. The last hour hadn't wiped away the last two years.

* * *

><p>Hearing his soft exhale, Ellie realised she couldn't explain it to him. She hadn't even realised herself how much she'd been holding in, not looking at, not dealing with over the last two years.<p>

She'd thought, when she'd been in Cicero, that the feelings would just go, after a while. Seeing him standing next to Lisa, his arm curled around her, they'd looked happy, he'd looked happy. That'd told her all she'd needed to know.

But nothing had gone. Nothing had faded away or dissolved through lack of reciprocation and now she couldn't understand why she'd ever thought they would. She'd hunted and researched, she'd looked for other relationships, she'd felt relatively normal. Thinking of that time, she supposed that the dreams weren't really normal, but they didn't affect the rest of the time, just the nights, when she'd been alone.

Seeing him again, it was as if the time they'd been apart hadn't existed. The walls and barriers she'd put in place to keep herself from thinking about him, thinking about him too much, to keep herself from feeling the loss too much, they'd crumbled the second he'd touched her. And lying in this bed with him, making love with him again … that had been a hundred times more powerful. Everything had broken. She rubbed her eyes, wiping the tears from her face. She could feel his heart, beating against her back, a little fast as he waited for her.

"I guess I didn't do such a good job of trying to forget you." She turned a little and he made room for her to turn over, his eyes dark with concern when they met hers.

"I guess that makes us even, then," he said lightly, drawing her closer.

* * *

><p>The sun was sinking, the room filled with more and more shadows as Dean leaned back against the pillows propped against the old-fashioned bedstead. He looked down at Ellie, lying beside him, watching her sleep, unarmoured and relaxed and warm against his side. His fingertip traced the new scars, a bullet graze across her ribs, a broad slash over her hip. He didn't want to think too deeply about those wounds or how'd she gotten them. Cas had healed him in Stull, taken away his old scars, including the handprint the angel had left on him. There were a few new scars, ones she wouldn't know, on him now.<p>

They'd heard Bobby's truck pull in a couple of hours before. Soon, not yet, but soon they would have to leave this sanctuary, get up, face the real world and work out how to deal with … everything.

He'd told her they could figure it out, how to be together in a life that wasn't stable, wasn't secure, wasn't safe, but he didn't know where to start. He couldn't hold her, not really, and not because she didn't love him, he was able to believe again that she did. But she'd been right. She was a hunter and she would have to go sometimes, and he would have to let her go sometimes. He thought that as long as she came back, it would be alright. He hoped it would be alright.

It went against his grain to let her go without his protection, but he couldn't pretend that she wasn't as capable, perhaps more so after years of hunting alone, as he was.

Ellie stirred, rolling onto her side to look up at him.

"Finished with the inventory?" she asked him, her mouth curving up to one side. He looked down at her body and exhaled, shrugging.

"You're gonna tell me about these, you know."

"One day," she agreed lazily. "When there's loads of time and nothing better to do." She wriggled up to lean against his shoulder. "Dean –"

"Yeah?" He looked at her profile, frowning as he caught a glimpse of the remoteness in her eyes. He knew that look, a distancing that was her way of dealing with pain. "Ellie?"

"Can you just hold me, for a little while?" She pressed a little closer, her cheek against the side of his neck.

Straightening against the headboard, he wrapped his arms around her, kissing her hair as he drew her close. The spectres of the time they'd been apart had come back, he thought, wishing there was a way she could see into him, without him having to struggle to find a way to explain what that time had been like. Half the time, it'd felt like he'd been out of his mind. Grieving. Searching. Trying to be someone he wasn't.

"I'm sorry, Ellie," he whispered. He couldn't put himself into her place, not deliberately imagine what she had seen, what she must have thought, felt. Stepping into that sort of pain would undo him.

He'd held to the promise he'd made Sam and while he could have told her that was all that it was, it wasn't the truth. The woman he held was the one person he could tell the truth to – the whole truth, unvarnished, unafraid of her reactions.

He'd cared for Lisa, and loved Ben … but the life he'd shared with them had been a pretence. And all through that year he'd struggled with the lies, and the half-truths and the omissions to make it possible to live that life, he'd felt himself dying a little each day, from the lack of the things that had made his hunting life not only bearable, but essential to him. The sense of purpose and meaning that saving people had given him. His brother, free from the Cage. And the woman he was holding now.

He hadn't missed the irony that the life he'd tried to escape from for so many years, had thought he'd wanted to get away from, had been the thing that had given him the most to be proud of, the thing that had structured the way he felt about himself. It had taken that year to realise that without it, he had no sense of himself at all. He'd wondered at the time if he would feel differently if Sam hadn't been in Hell. He would've, of course, but not all that much. The family life had given him a kind of peace, a place that wasn't alive but was still and quiet and asked nothing from him, it'd seemed. And that, he'd found, wasn't worth the loss. But he'd made another promise, unwittingly, not knowing what to do or how to get back what he'd wanted. And breaking that unspoken promise to Lisa and Ben wasn't something he'd been unable to face either.

By the time he'd been in Cicero for a month, he'd told himself that Ellie was gone for good. He'd thought that she, of everyone, would've known what Sam's loss would do to him, and he'd been unable to believe that she wouldn't be there, maybe not straight away, but soon, before he'd had to let his grief in and try to deal with it. When she hadn't come back, he'd tried to convince himself that what she'd told him was a lie. He'd tried to convince himself that she'd stopped loving him. Even then he'd known it wasn't true. It was something to help him get by, to help him deal because if he could be angry at her, then he didn't have to grieve for her as well as his brother.

"It didn't feel real," he said quietly, trying to find the words to express everything he'd felt. "It felt like a long, vivid dream most of the time. The nightmares. Sam gone. You gone. Drinking too much. Trying to explain to someone without any background what my life had been like. And knowing, the whole time, that I wouldn't be able to. I couldn't tell her the way it was. And I don't think – I didn't think she wanted to hear it."

He'd seen Lisa's reactions to the few things he had told her. The things he'd thought she needed to know about him. He'd stopped talking about his life after that, although it hadn't been till a while after that he'd gotten the real truth of what she'd thought of his life, and of him.

Looking down at Ellie, he didn't know if what he was saying was helping, or hurting her more. She was half-curled against him, her head bowed, her eyes closed, her arms curled over her breasts. He could feel the warm moisture of her tears against his skin.

"If I'd known –" he hesitated, licking his lips as he tried to find the right words. "If I'd known the truth –"

He stopped again, dragging in a deep breath as he looked for the honesty that he needed now. There wasn't enough time to go right through it. But she needed to know the truth.

"No. If I'd _believed_ what Cas had told me. About why you'd left. If I'd even guessed …" he stopped again, trying to control the regret, all that time wasted, that was making it making it more and more painful to breathe, to talk. "Cas couldn't find you, after Sam … you know. And I wasn't thinking straight, then or later."

He remembered how quickly he'd come to the conclusion that she hadn't meant what she'd said, how quick he'd been to believe he was too broken for anyone to love, Famine's words still echoing in his head, even after all this time.

"I was too ready to believe that … that you … that you didn't … that things had changed. That you didn't want to come back."

She shivered slightly against him and he tightened his grip around her.

"I didn't know what I was feeling, half the time. The rest, I couldn't look at, didn't want to look at."

And the hits had kept on coming. The last year had been a cluster-fuck of gargantuan proportions, starting with Sam not being Sam anymore and ending with Cas' betrayal. If he'd had any time to stop and think, he would have laid down and died sometime through the year, adrenal overload or just not being able to function.

He pushed those memories aside. Everything that could've gone wrong, had. There wasn't much else to say about it. It didn't change anything, didn't excuse the fact that he'd given up.

Not knowing what he'd been feeling, not understanding why his emotions had been swinging, from anger to depression, back and forth with every day that'd passed, with every case he'd tried to work with his brother. Sam had been flying without a soul and when he'd found out, when his brother had finally admitted that he knew something was wrong but didn't know what it was, he'd been ready to throw it all in. Cas and Bobby had both told him not to get his brother's soul back. Death had warned him. Nothing they'd said had mattered as much to him as Sam being himself again. But he'd been scared of making that decision for his brother.

"Crowley had us working for him, trying to find the alphas for a way into Purgatory," he said softly and he felt her nod against his neck. "Everything was so screwed up, Ellie. Me and Lisa, we were done but Crowley grabbed them, he was holding them, trying to get some leverage against me and – and, you know, all I could think of was that if you hadn't left, none of it would be happening."

He felt her tense a little under his arm, against his side, and he let out his breath in a gusting exhale. "I didn't – I wasn't – I wasn't blaming you," he said, too quickly he knew, feeling the tension still there. "I just – fuck, I felt like – it was like I shouldn't be allowed to live. I was the worst luck for anyone who tried to be close, tried to get close. No matter how much I tried to keep people safe, they ended up dead – or in pain – their lives a wreck – because of me."

"Sam – Sam, Cas left his soul down with Lucifer and Michael," he said, his chest constricting again with the memories. "I asked Death to get it back. And he did. He put a wall around Sam's memories, so he wouldn't know what'd happened down there …"

"Then we dragged Bobby and Rufus into a fight with this – this – mother, Eve, and Rufus – she killed him. When Crowley grabbed Lisa and Ben – there wasn't – he had a demon in her and when I got rid of it, it stabbed her – and –"

"It wasn't your fault, Dean," Ellie said, very softly against his neck.

He sucked in another breath. "Maybe not," he said, eyes closing as he leaned back against the headboard. "But it was my responsibility. They never would've been in danger if they hadn't known me. If I hadn't – I thought they were out of it, I thought they'd be safe. Stupid, goddamned –"

* * *

><p>Ellie shifted away from him slightly, sitting up and looking at him. "Did Lisa regret the time you spent together?" she asked abruptly. He was too quick to put the blame for everything on himself. He always had been. She hadn't seen the woman he'd been with looking apprehensive. She'd seen a woman who'd wanted him there.<p>

He lifted his gaze to hers. _It was the best year of my life_. Lisa's words slipped into him, and his expression spasmed at the memory.

"No," he admitted unwillingly, turning away. "That has nothing to do with –"

"Maybe not," she said. "Maybe you made a bad call, Dean. Forgot that all the people we care about are hostages to whatever wants us dead or something from us. Doesn't change that she might've chosen to be with you, even knowing what was coming. Doesn't change that if an enemy's really determined, there's nothing we can do to guarantee the safety of the people we love."

His face screwed up. "Except stay the fuck away from having anyone who fits that category in our lives."

"I can't do that," she said, biting her lip as she looked at him. "Can you?"

She saw his eyes widen a little as what she was asking sank in. The last year had been a bad one. She'd heard most of what he'd told her, not in the same detail but the broad strokes. If he hadn't still been involved with the Braedens, she would've returned a lot earlier.

He looked down, shaking his head a little. "It's different," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

"Is it?" she asked, her voice quiet. "You asked me to stay."

"I didn't need them," he said, eyes screwing shut. "Not like I need you."

"What happened?"

* * *

><p>He tipped his head back, his eyes staying closed. "The demon stabbed Lisa. We got her to the hospital but the damage – she was dying. Cas turned up and I wanted to kill him."<p>

He opened his eyes, dropping his gaze to meet hers. "He was Crowley's partner, all that time. Helping Crowley to open Purgatory."

He watched her turn her head away, her expression smoothing out. "He needed the souls to fight Raphael?"

"That's what he said," he told her, hearing the bitterness that laced his voice. "He turned up at the hospital and healed Lisa and I told him … I told him to wipe out their memories of me, all of them."

She didn't say anything, and he chewed on the corner of his lip, watching her.

"I know it didn't make them any safer," he said, as the silence stretched out a little too long. He pulled in a breath. "I did it so I wouldn't have to see their disappointment. Their fear of what I'd brought into their lives, and their disappointment in me."

He looked at the far wall, cluttered with the piles of stuff Bobby'd left in here. It'd been a coward's way out, he thought. He'd known it at the time, hadn't wanted to acknowledge it, had tried to tell himself that it was for their own safety. It wasn't.

"When I was there, I thought I could make it work," he said, feeling his way as something else opened up inside of him. "I thought, maybe you'd been right."

She looked at him, one brow rising slightly in query.

"The, uh, place outside of Castle Rock, we were down near the river?" he said, memory rushing back with the feelings of warmth and ease, lying in the grass by the river's edge, talking about anything and nothing. And she'd asked him about Lisa, awhile after the changeling case. Other memories accompanied the real one, that setting had been the jumping off point for most of his fantasies and a flush of heat rose through him again. "You – you – uh – said back then, maybe I could learn to love."

The duck of her head told him she remembered that moment. "You said you didn't think it worked that way," she said.

He nodded. "I didn't. I just thought, maybe it could." His mouth pursed as he thought of how hard he'd tried to make that work.

"I was wrong," he said. "They wanted me to be someone I wasn't. I don't think – I think Lisa didn't – she didn't seem to know who I was. She thought I –"

He shook his head. "I don't know what she thought. But I couldn't be that person. I didn't know who the hell I was when I was there, I could feel everything I'd believed in, the things you'd told me were still there, after – the things I could hold onto, just slipping away."

Ellie leaned against him, her cheek against the hollow of his shoulder.

"I went to Richmond, to the uh, the Hidden Door," he said, a moment later. "Trying to find a way to get into the cage, without the rings."

She nodded. "Katherine called me."

"She asked me if I wanted to leave a message for you," he said, a shiver of ice skittering down his back as he remembered.

"I know." She shifted against him slightly. "I asked her to. I thought – I thought if I'd been wrong … if you weren't as happy as it'd seemed, it would give you a way to let me know."

The ice grew and thickened, filling his chest as that hit him. It hadn't occurred to him that she'd known about the promise, or where he was. He hadn't left the message because he'd thought she could come at any time.

His throat was tight and hot and he couldn't say anything. He'd been to the store in October, he thought. Not so long that the ties he'd formed with Lisa and Ben had been too hard to break. Not then.

"Y-you couldn't have told her to tell me you were back?" he said, the words grinding out through the obstruction of his throat. "That you w-wanted to see me?"

Her exhale was warm over his chest. "I didn't want to drag you out of something you wanted," she said, her voice as thick as his as she lifted her head to look up at him. "I didn't want to wreck your chance at a life you'd told me you wanted."

"C-christ, Ellie," he said, his mouth thinning. "I _did_ want that life, I _do_ want that life – with _you_."

He could feel her stillness, holding her breath, and he let out his own in a long huff.

"You were right," he said softly. "When I got out of Hell, I didn't think – it felt like the punishment for what I'd done was being alone. For good. No parole. No reprieves, just –"

_Damned for eternity_, that's what he'd thought. It'd made it hard to believe in other people. In what they saw in him. In what they felt about him. He'd believed her because she'd known it all. Because he'd told her and she hadn't run, hadn't tried to make it less than what it was, had accepted it and had loved him even knowing it.

"Even before that," he said, hesitantly as he tried to work out exactly what he wanted to say. "I, uh, spent a lot of time, trying to not want anything from anyone. We'd roll into a town, be there a week, maybe longer, maybe not, and it just seemed pointless, you know?"

"I didn't need that many people. Dad and Sam, Jim and Caleb, for a while that was enough," he continued, walking down memory lane, flinching a little in anticipation. Sam had gone first.

"When Sam left, I tried to accept it," he said. "Tried to, uh, see it from his view, this life we were in, it didn't leave a lot of room for – uh – dreams –"

He'd met Cassie a few weeks after that, in Ohio. Maybe it'd been his brother's loss, the shattering of his family and what he'd needed that had made that relationship seem like more than what it had been. He didn't know. He'd spent two weeks with her, researching for his father and spending every spare minute he'd had with her, talking, listening, arguing, making love in her tiny student apartment, in the backseat of the car, in the warm darkness by the river, wherever they could find. There'd been a chemistry between them, hot and demanding and he'd willingly submerged himself in it, not feeling Sam's absence when he was with her, not feeling the discomfort and unease between him and his father, or the sense that everything had changed, was changing and he wasn't ready for change.

When he'd finally gathered up the courage to tell her about his life, about what he did and what he wanted, she'd laughed, at first. Then she'd gotten angry. Then she'd left. And that'd been a blow he hadn't been able to come back from. Betrayed by the way he'd felt, he'd tried to seal himself off. Tried to tell himself that he had no dreams, didn't want anything for himself.

"I thought I knew about being in love, thought I'd felt that way before," he told Ellie. He'd really thought he had. After seeing Cassie again, he'd realised that the pain he'd felt hadn't been from losing her. It'd been from letting someone else see who he was and turn away. He hadn't got that straight in his head until a long time after Cape Girardeau and the damned haunted truck.

"After that, I, uh, kept things simple," he told her, his mouth curling up to one side in a self-derisory smile. Simple meant seeing someone whose interest in him was obvious from the get-go, who wanted no more than he did, or who'd tell themselves they did. Simple meant going out to a bar, throwing a couple of lines and finding someplace more or less private to shed the tension that the job brought with it. Simple meant leaving as quickly as possible, with no confrontations about what it might've meant and finishing the night crunched in the car or slinking back to the motel rooms, smelling of liquor and sex and not looking – _ever_ – at the feeling that'd lurked at the back of every encounter, that he was missing something, that there was something else he wanted.

It was clearer to him now. Living with someone for a year had done that much, even though he hadn't known it at the time.

They'd been in Michigan when he'd first noticed, he thought. That faint feeling of possessiveness, the way he hadn't been able to not watch her, the disappointment when she'd gone, even with Laney's company waiting for him.

He hadn't paid it that much attention, too much else on his plate and too many things that were changing all the time. He'd buried his feelings when he thought she'd died. Had told himself it was guilt, guilt that she'd been trying to save him and had paid for that with her life. But guilt hadn't been all that he'd been feeling.

"When we – in Nebraska, when we – when you said – said that you loved me," he stumbled over the words, hating the awkwardness, his inability to get what he felt out, his stomach fluttering with nerves. "I didn't know what the hell I felt."

He lifted his hand, slipping his fingers under her jaw and lifting hers so he could see her face. "It wasn't just what I told you, it wasn't just this –" he looked at the bed under them. " – it was different, from anything else. From _everything_ else."

"You didn't believe me?" she asked.

"Yeah, I did," he said. "It turned everything around. Up was down, down was up and I didn't know – I couldn't tell – what it meant. Not then."

When Cas had dropped him on the street, and the building's wall had blown out, he'd known then. But in the aftermath of escaping from the archangel, in the disbelief when Cas had turned up and told him, in the long months that'd followed, arguing with himself, afraid to believe, scared of wanting so much … he'd lost that certainty.

Emotion had been hitting him from every angle and he'd been drowning, not knowing what to do, what path was the best one, how to save his brother, how to save the world. All the clarity he'd felt when he was with her had gone, and he'd been floundering from one disaster to another, all the time seeing both him and Sam moving closer and closer to an ending he hadn't wanted to face.

Afterwards, in the cold numbness that'd filled him, he'd thought she would come and be there, help him deal with what had happened, help him find a way to get Sam out. But she hadn't.

"I was waiting, here," he said slowly. "Cas turned up. Said he couldn't see you. He said that all the angels had known, straight away, when the cage closed. I thought that meant that you – you'd changed your mind."

"I was in the middle of nowhere when it closed," she said softly. "I couldn't get there any faster."

He shook his head. "Yeah, I know, that's not – I didn't - I wasn't thinking straight then, trying to hold everything in … I should've waited but I – I just didn't."

He looked down at her. "I got … lost. A lot, in the last couple of years. Most of the time I couldn't think about you, or why it was so damned impossible to let go of you. I couldn't even think near it," he told her, his mouth curling up a little. His feelings had changed, from day to day it'd felt like. He'd been up and down and none of it had made any kind of sense, none of it had stayed still long enough for him to get a handle on it.

He'd rolled out from under the car and the whole lot had hit him, all at once. Every damned thing he hadn't dealt with, all the things he'd thought he'd cleared away, all of it back and clawing at him.

"When I saw you, it didn't seem real," he said. "Then it did. So fucking real I wanted to –" He shook his head, looking away. "I couldn't believe it."

"I got the feeling you were angry," she said and he turned back to her.

"I was," he admitted. "Right up to you telling me why."

Even then, he'd still felt that uncertainty. She'd said she never stopped loving him but she hadn't wanted to try again.

When he'd touched her, when all that emotion had come crashing back … _you weren't supposed to say it in the middle of sex. Or making love. Definitely not after coming. It was one of those clichés, one of those guy clichés, that instantly predisposes disbelief …_ but it had all come together then. Knowing what the feelings were, knowing why they'd been so overwhelming, so contradictory. He looked down at her.

"I can exist without you. I can do what I have to, but it's not living … I feel as if I'm dead inside. Just like Famine said. That went away when I saw you … that deadness, the emptiness … just disappeared." He lifted her face to his, his eyes meeting hers.

"You make that happen," he told her. "No one else."

Looking into their brightness, the lashes wet and sticky with her tears, he found the words he wanted to say, felt the rightness of them for the first time in his life, knew that no matter what happened, they would remain true.

"I love you."


	5. Chapter 5 A Taste of Things To Come

**Chapter 5 A Taste of Things To Come**

* * *

><p>Bobby sat at the kitchen table, reading as he ate. He looked up at the sound of footsteps on the stairs, turning around to see Dean and Ellie cross the hall and come into the bright room.<p>

It'd been more than a few months since he'd last seen the red-haired hunter, and he could still remember the tension that had been humming in her the last time. She'd told him she going was out of the country and from what he'd heard, she had and had stayed out for awhile. He couldn't see any tension in her now. She still looked too thin, but the hard edges, the brittleness, had softened, somehow. Shifting his gaze to the man standing close beside her, he thought he understood how that'd happened.

Dean … he had to work to keep his face expressionless as he studied the younger man from under the brow of his cap. The underlying anger and uncertainty that'd been there more or less constantly in the last year had gone, he realised. For the first time he could remember in a long, long time. There was no wariness in the green eyes, and no shadows lurking behind them. Dean looked … peaceful, he thought in surprise. His eyes narrowed slightly as he checked that impression again, not sure he'd ever seen him look like that. Maybe, when the man had been a boy. Not since, he was pretty sure.

He'd made the trip out to Indiana a couple of times, to check on him, make sure he was doing okay in the civilian life. At those times, he'd thought he looked good. Calm. Happy. Doing what he'd wanted. When Dean'd brought Lisa back here and had reamed him a new one for keeping him in the dark about Sam, however, he'd looked back on those memories more carefully, belatedly recognising that the happiness he'd been sure he'd seen had been a façade, a cover for the family he'd been with. It'd made him rethink everything he'd done … and said.

"Thought I recognised that truck down the block. You didn't want get associated with the town drunk, Ellie?" he said, his gaze shifting back.

She smiled at him, shaking her head. "No, just didn't want to advertise who I was visiting. Old habits."

Bobby looked at Dean, pushing back his cap as he gave the man a one-sided grin. "Smart girl."

"Yeah, I think so too." He nodded, the corner of his mouth lifting wryly, turning to look at Ellie and edging a little closer.

Looking from one to the other, Bobby felt his heart lifting slightly. He'd watched Dean pretend that his heart hadn't been broken, when Sam had gone into the cage, and Ellie hadn't shown up. He watched Ellie pretend the same thing when she'd arrived weeks after Dean had left for Indiana, and he'd had to tell her about the promise.

Lisa had been a nice woman, and Dean had clearly cared for her. But she'd been a civilian and it hadn't been hard to see she didn't know much of what had made up the life of the man she'd been living with. Wasn't ever going to know about it, he'd thought, watching them together. He'd wanted to tell Dean about Ellie's return back then, when he'd brought Lisa and Ben to this house. But when Dean had told them what that year had cost him, he just couldn't. He'd been faced with the fact they'd been wrong, him and Sam. So damned wrong about Dean. And watching him twist himself into knots, worried about Lisa and Ben and devastated about Sam, he'd thought he'd be able to grab the younger man alone when the current crisis had passed.

He should have stepped up and told him then, he thought, looking at them now. Dean had been ready to leave Lisa, to go hunting with his brother again. He had no doubt that a lot of the misery of the last year wouldn't have occurred if he had. He sighed. Wasn't much use crying over spilt milk. And now, well, maybe something could go right.

"You get yourselves sorted out this time?"

The younger man slid his arm around Ellie, and Bobby hid a grin at the expression on his face, a mix of hope and certainty and poorly hidden desire. The bug had been a long time coming for Dean but it'd bitten finally, he thought. Bitten damned hard.

"I hope so."

Ellie ducked her head as she moved to the table, and Bobby wondered what the woman's pragmatic streak had to say about that. He'd known her for almost five years, not well, not in the early days, but she'd been around a few times when Dean had been in Indiana, passing on information and staying for a meal, or a few glasses, and once or twice, they'd talked right through the night, conversations that'd begun on some topic of hunting or monsters or the myths surrounding the other planes, but mostly ending up about the man they both missed. She wasn't in the habit of lying to herself, he knew. No matter how much she might want to.

They pulled out a couple of chairs, sitting down across from Bobby.

Dean slid the summoning scroll across the table to Bobby. "We've got some work to do."

Bobby unrolled it and picked up his glasses, reading it through. His eyebrows shot up under his cap as he finished. "This for Crowley?"

Dean nodded, his gaze cutting sideways to the woman beside him. "Ellie got it."

Bobby looked at her, eyes narrowed. "Now, where the hell did you find this?"

"Hell." She smiled at him enigmatically.

"She won't tell you about it, Bobby, so don't even bother asking," Dean said sourly.

Bobby looked at him and then back at Ellie. The spell he held in his hands was no minor league incantation. He'd never seen one quite like it, in fact. He had a feeling that he didn't really want to know where she'd gotten it.

"And why're we summoning Crowley?"

Ellie leaned forward, propping her elbows on the table. "To get a binding spell for Death, of course."

Bobby blinked. He looked from her to Dean. "You want to bind Death?"

He glanced at Ellie, and back to Bobby, exhaling noisily. "Yeah, uh, not really. But Death is probably the only one who can bind Cas now. Or kill him, if it comes to that."

He still wasn't sure that this was the best course of action. Death hadn't liked being on Lucifer's leash, and despite the righteousness of their cause, he suspected the entity wouldn't be any more sanguine about being bound by them. The risks were enormous. The chance of success small. What else was new?

Glancing at the woman sitting next to him, he wondered again how she'd gotten it. Bobby's reaction made it very clear it was some kind of major mojo, and she'd refused to elaborate on where she'd found it, diverting his attention from those questions easily, knowing which buttons to push. Not, he admitted to himself, that he'd minded.

"It's gonna take me some time to get this stuff together," Bobby said, looking back at the parchment.

"Good," Dean said without thinking, grinning a little at the old man as he heard Ellie's snort beside him. She'd told him she could stay for a couple of days, or whenever they were ready to do the ritual. She didn't mention why she didn't want to see the King of Hell, had just muttered something about needing to get back to Richmond.

That looming deadline tempered his grin slightly. A couple of days wasn't long enough.

He'd told her, and the world had remained intact, and the last of the tension he'd seen in her had slipped away. It'd been something of an epiphany, as the words had come out, to realise he could never have said them to Lisa – or to anyone else. There'd been a feeling of truth, reverberating through him, a feeling that had come from down inside, where he lived and breathed. Where it was just him. That feeling hadn't wanted anything else, just to say it. He understood now the difference between the two times, and the two women, who'd said it to him.

"Uh, we took over one of the rooms, upstairs," he added to the older hunter, wondering how Bobby would see that.

"One at the end?" Bobby asked, seemingly unconcerned.

"Yeah."

"Good, needs a clean-out. The stuff in there could go up to the attic. I was goin' to get around to it one day," Bobby remarked, pushing his glasses higher up his nose and lifting the scroll. "How much longer do you need on the car?"

"Maybe another couple of days, get the last of the dips out of the panels," Dean said, thinking about that. "Then I can paint."

"Well, I guess Ellie can drive you around," Bobby said, looking at her over the rim of his glasses. "If you're stayin' for a bit?"

"For what?" Dean asked.

"Pick up this crap," Bobby said, waving a hand at the parchment. "Or do you imagine I got a jar full of salamanders sittin' here somewhere, gatherin' dust?"

"Sal-a … salamanders?"

Ellie nodded. "There's a place in Lincoln that has them," she said matter-of-factly. "I didn't make a copy of that, or look at the ingredients all that carefully but if we have a list, I can probably get nearly all of it."

She got to her feet. "My laptop's in the truck," she said, looking at Dean. "I'll be right back."

He half-rose, subsiding at her quick headshake, and he listened to her walk out to the front, the door open and close.

"So," he said, turning back to Bobby. "I heard you were keeping Ellie up to date the last couple of years."

He saw the old man's slight grimace. "Yeah, was I supposed to pretend I didn't know what was going on?"

"You couldn't've said something to me? Like, I don't know, she was back and she wanted to see me?" Dean asked, trying to subdue the bitter edge he could hear in his voice. Done was done, and he'd already seen that Bobby and his brother hadn't known him as well as he'd thought they had.

"Hell, Dean," Bobby said, pushing his cap up and rubbing his forehead. "She turned up nearly five weeks after you'd gone, after you'd told me that you were settlin' in. I didn't know what the hell to do. I thought you were happy. Thought you were out. I didn't want anything to wreck that."

"And after Sam came back?"

"Didn't you tell me that you didn't want to lose Lisa and Ben? That you couldn't figure how to hunt with your brother and have your family at the same time?" Bobby asked, his tone slightly defensive. "'Cause that sure sounded like you."

He had said it to the old man, he thought. The last thing he'd wanted was to lose what he'd thought he'd had to the life again.

"Didn't you know how I felt, man?"

Bobby sighed, pushing his dinner to one side as he stared down at the table. "After she disappeared, I thought you were head over heels, Dean," he said heavily, keeping his gaze on the scarred and battered table top. "Then you stopped talking about her. You might not remember but it was me who told you to wait a bit longer, when you got here and Cas said he couldn't see her."

He held up his hand as Dean opened his mouth to argue. "I know you couldn't see straight right then, for fuck's sake, a'course I could see that. And I figured you didn't have the time to wait 'cause grief was already eating at you." He scratched his beard, looking at the younger man. "I knew how that was gonna feel too, Dean. I knew you were gonna need someplace where you could let it out without it killin' you."

Dean looked away, chewing on the corner of his lip. Bobby'd been right about that. It still nearly had.

"I waited for you to mention Ellie again, but you – you never did," Bobby continued, his voice dropping. "I didn't know where you were at with that. Not until the minute you two walked down my staircase – and I'm sorry, but that's the truth."

Dean stared at the floor. He was right, he thought. He hadn't been able to talk about her at all after he'd moved in with Lisa and Ben. Had tried not to think about her.

"I'm sorry, Dean," Bobby said, his voice hoarse. "If I'd thought there was the faintest chance, I'd've told her. I just didn't know."

And he hadn't known that Ellie had been aware of where he'd been and what he'd been doing, Dean thought. And she hadn't known that he hadn't been at peace, in his ordinary life.

"Yeah," he said, lifting his gaze and seeing Bobby's regrets, written across the old man's face. "Yeah, I get it."

Bobby glanced at the hall. "What now?"

Following his gaze, Dean said, "I don't know. Not exactly. We'll find time however we can, I guess." He turned back to Bobby. "In the meantime, we got a summoning and binding spell for Crowley, and we're gonna have to hope that's enough to get what we need to control Death."

"This ain't a good idea, Dean."

Dean snorted. "You think I don't know that? It's the only game in town, Bobby. So we'll just have to ante up."

The front door opened, and they heard Ellie come in and close it again, the locks clicking.

She came into the kitchen and looked around, setting her bag on the floor and dragging out the slim computer. "Okay, let's go through that and see what we can get?"

* * *

><p>"Hey, how you doing?"<p>

Ellie looked up as Sam came through the door, knuckling his eyes as he glanced at Bobby and Dean.

"Alright," he said, turning for the kitchen and stopping in the archway that separated the two rooms. "Ellie?"

"Hey, Sam," she said quietly, trying to hide her shock at the way he looked.

Dean had told her a little about what had gone with them in the last month, Cas becoming more and more desperate for the souls, breaking the wall that Death had put his brother's mind to protect him from the memories of the cage when the hunters had refused to help him. Sam's titanic struggle to integrate those memories into his conscious mind.

"What the – what happened?" Sam asked, taking another couple of steps into the kitchen.

"She couldn't live without me," Dean told him, smirking slightly as he got to his feet and walked into the kitchen past his brother.

Ellie shrugged and gave Sam a smile. "Basically, that's it."

"You want something to eat?" Dean asked and Sam nodded, walking over to the table and sitting down opposite Ellie.

"Rough time," she said to him, making it not so much of a question.

"Understatement," he responded, nodding as he glanced at his brother. "Are you – uh – you staying?"

"For a couple of days," Ellie told him. She watched him flinch slightly, from something she couldn't see, his throat working as he turned back to her and fixed his gaze on her face.

"Gotta plan to deal with Cas," Dean interjected from the stove, flipping burgers.

"Really?" Sam looked quizzically at Ellie.

She nodded. "It's a long shot," she told him, glancing at his brother. "A summoning geis for Crowley to get a spell to bind Death."

He blinked at her. "Bind … Death?"

"Yeah, we've been through this with Bobby," Dean said impatiently, splitting rolls and turning the heat off under the burgers. "It's not that much of a long shot."

Ellie gave him a wry smile. "Just as dangerous as hell."

"I'll give you that," he acknowledged as he put the burgers, cheese and ketchup on the rolls.

She moved the laptop aside as Dean brought over a plate for his brother, thunking it onto the table top in front of Sam.

"Eat," Dean said, dropping into the chair next to Ellie. "Some cow gave up its life so you could live."

Sam's brow wrinkled up derisively as he picked up the burger.

"How far have you got?" Dean asked Ellie.

"We can get most of this in Lincoln," she said, glancing around at the open screen. "There's a guy there who supplies a lot of the mid-west with esoteric ingredients. The fulgurite and the powdered turquoise we can pick up at any New Age store in between here and Lincoln."

"What about the blood?"

"Abattoir in town," Bobby grunted from the living room. "I'll get that."

"What time you want to get going?" Sam asked, swallowing his mouthful.

"Uh," Dean hesitated, glancing at Ellie. "Car still needs some work and Ellie's got her truck here, so, um, we can handle the grocery run. You should, uh, stay here, get your rest."

She saw a flicker of unease in Sam's expression as he dropped his gaze back to his food.

"What's wrong, Sam?"

He looked up, shrugging. "Nothing," he said quickly. "That's fine."

As he looked back down at his food, his gaze twitched to the side again, his face paling as he determinedly took another big bite of the burger.

* * *

><p>The lamp, squeezed in between two piles of teetering boxes, cast weird shadows over the half the bedroom, and left the other half in darkness. On the edge of its pool of light, their skin was gilded, and Dean looked up, bucking up a little, his fingers closing tightly around hers as her hips rolled and lifted, the muscle surrounding him rippling up his length.<p>

The sight of her would've been enough, he thought, sucking in a breath as she dropped again, her hair wildfire around her shoulders and over her breasts, her eyes half-open and lips parted as she looked down at him, the deceptively slow rhythm building a torturous pleasure, deeply intense and as hopelessly out of his ability to control his reactions, his responses, as every other time.

He felt the change, her quickening around him, a jittery, jangling feeling that reached into him, his hips jerking up involuntarily, everything concentrating in one place, pulling at him in rapid, unbearable waves of pleasure. Deep within the heat and pressure, the staccato oscillations gave way to pummelling spasms, clutching and stroking and squeezing and her fingers, interlaced with his, tightened abruptly.

His hand slid along her hip, the skin warm and slightly flushed in the glowing aftermath and she rolled onto her side, her hand brushing up his chest, her pupils still enlarged, looking up at him.

"I could handle that as a regularly scheduled program," he said softly, his hand lifting to push the damp tendrils of her hair back from her forehead.

She lifted a brow, looking at him consideringly. "I think I'd wear you out," she said, the corner of her mouth tucking in.

"I got stamina I haven't even looked at yet," he said, leaning down to brush his lips over hers, the light touch managing to ignite his nerves in spite of the recent release. "Might, uh, take me a little longer to, uh, regroup, you know."

She laughed, lifting herself to lean on an elbow. "Prime of your life."

"Right."

He watched the laughter fade from her face as she looked around the room, letting his gaze drift over her, his body tightening in appreciation. There wasn't a part of her that didn't have that effect, he thought.

"Did you know Sam's hallucinating?" she asked, and he looked at her, desire and the warm, post-orgasmic contentment doused instantly.

"What?"

"You haven't seen it?"

"No – what –? What the hell makes you think that?" He pushed himself up the bed, leaning against the headboard.

"The way he was when he came in … while he was eating," she told him. "He was twitchy, looking at things that weren't there, reacting to something that wasn't there."

He opened his mouth to deny it, then closed it again. She wasn't prone to panic, he knew and she wouldn't've said anything unless she'd been pretty sure.

"What – uh – what'd it look like?"

"Something that was getting his attention," she said, eyes half-closing. "I don't know. I thought you might've talked to him about it."

"No," Dean said, although, he thought, he sure as hell was _gonna_. "The memories? He said he was getting, uh, images, you know, like flashbacks."

"Didn't look like flashbacks," Ellie said. "I might be wrong –"

"But probably not," Dean said, shaking his head. "No. I didn't know. He hasn't said much about what's going on in his melon."

"You haven't either," Ellie said softly.

"I'm – I'm better than fine," he said, looking down at her, waving his hand around the room in explanation.

The look she gave him was doubtful and he slid down the pillows, arm slipping behind her.

"I am," he said. "The last few months, yeah, they weren't good –"

"Are you dealing with what Cas did?"

"Wha–? Uh, yeah," he said, his gaze cutting away. "I mean, it doesn't matter now, we got a plan –"

"Dean," she said, lifting her hand to turn his face back to her. "Don't let that go, alright? Don't pretend it doesn't matter."

He dropped his gaze, not knowing what to say to that. It was over. Done. Nothing he could do would change what'd happened. He could allow that talking to her had helped, in some areas, but the angel'd shattered his trust, stomped all over the pieces and then used Sam as a diversion. It wasn't something he could just forgive and forget.

_Don't make me lose you too_. He'd said it to Cas, thinking he might get through that way, but maybe Cas'd seen that he hadn't meant it. If Cas'd been straight with them, if he'd just trusted him, most of what'd happened last year wouldn't've happened at all.

And had that been Cas' choice, he wondered uncomfortably?

"Angels aren't designed for free will," Ellie reminded him gently. "No souls. They were created to serve the Spheres. Obedient. Faithful. That's all."

"You sayin' Cas gets a free pass?" he asked, aware that she was right about this. He'd seen it himself, time after time. Didn't mean he had to like it. Or let what'd happened just go. "How is it that the arcs … Raphael and Michael and the others, were exercising their free will enough to plan the end of the world?"

"Pride is one of their flaws," Ellie said. "It always has been. And no, I'm not asking you turn yourself inside out trying to give Cas a no-fault out, Dean. Just … when you look at what happened, you have to take into account that he can't behave the way a person would. That's not in him. And you can't have expectations of him, the way you might about anyone else."

She moved away from him a little, and he saw her close her eyes. Reaching out, he turned off the lamp and shifted down the bed, rolling over to fit himself against her, feeling her ribs rise and fall with a deeper breath as his arms curved around her.

He'd been looking at the angel as if he'd been a man, he knew. Feeling the betrayal as if Cas had been human. The obedience bullshit had grated on him from the moment he'd met the angel. He'd been able to recognise that Cas was loyal and honourable, certainly in comparison to Uriel, but it hadn't been until he'd found himself trapped in Zachariah's room with no way out, that he'd seen that Cas literally didn't know what to do, how to go against the orders he'd been given.

A good soldier, he thought. A lousy tactician.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Lincoln, Nebraska<strong>_

Ellie wove them through the business section of the city, pulling over in front of a large, red-brick four-storey building, a little way out of downtown. Looking around, Dean noted the small businesses and restaurants that took up most of the frontage, the sidewalks busy with people moving in all directions.

The store itself was on the second storey of the building, a plain wooden door with 'Golden Dawn Imports' painted on the frosted glass window at the top.

"Golden Dawn?" he asked, as Ellie opened it.

"It's a joke," she told him, walking across the narrow lobby to a counter and ringing the small bell there. "Recognisable to anyone who's involved in the life."

It wasn't to him, he thought, but decided against admitting. He could ask her about it, some other time. The small lobby had a couple of uncomfortable-looking chairs and a poster, faded and with one corner peeling off the wall, advertising a lecture tour by some woman with the unlikely name of Dion Fortune. The tour dates were twenty years old.

"Help you?"

He turned to see a short man appear from the door behind the counter, receding pale red hair and fair skin, wearing heavy black plastic framed glasses and a white coat.

"Roland, sorry I didn't call –" Ellie said, and Dean watched the man push his glasses more firmly onto his nose.

"Miss Morgan, you know very well that I don't have many of the more esoteric items in stock here," Roland said, his mouth puckering up prissily. "Now, we have been through this time and again, and you persist in just showing up, throwing my schedule into the sort of disorganised chaos you obviously prefer your life to be in."

"I know, I –"

"Yes, I'm sure the excuse is excellent, yours always are, but it does not help, Miss Morgan," Roland cut her off, a faint gleam of perspiration on his upper lip and beading over his brow. He pulled out a pressed handkerchief from his lab coat pocket as he continued, "There's just no excuse for a lack of forethought and careful preparation in this business, you know that."

"I know," Ellie said and Dean swallowed his surprise as he saw her drop her gaze contritely. "I'm sorry."

"Yes, well, sorry didn't save the Titanic, did it?" the man said, mopping at his face and putting the damp handkerchief in his pocket again. He glanced at Dean, frowning.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"I'm, uh," Dean said, wondering if Roland's attitude would improve with a broken nose. "I'm with the lady."

"Oh." Roland sniffed, barely hiding an eyeroll as he turned back to Ellie. "Alright, since you're here, show me what you need."

Ellie pulled the printed list from her backpack and handed it across the counter, watching Roland's face as he scanned down its length.

"You have an indecent amount of luck, Miss Morgan," he said after a moment's reading. "It so happens that I have an order of phoenix ash that was never picked up. And a fresh batch of salamanders came in yesterday."

He looked up at her. "There will be surcharge on the rest, I'm afraid. You'll be cleaning me out of them until next month."

Stepping up to the counter, Dean opened his mouth to tell the damned little nazi that a sale was a sale, when Ellie's elbow hit him in the ribs. Roland looked up from the list at him and he closed his mouth, forcing himself to smile. Sort of.

"This will take two hours to prepare and pack," Roland said, looking back at Ellie.

She nodded. "We'll come back at three."

Watching him bustle back through the door behind the counter, Dean turned to look at her.

"The hell was that all about?" he asked indignantly.

She smiled and shrugged. "He likes to feel important," she said. "It doesn't worry me to help him out with that, and if he did take offence, we'd have to drive to Laramie to find this stuff."

She slid her arm through his, turning for the door. "Let's grab some lunch, somewhere nice and relaxing while we wait," she suggested.

Dean scowled over his shoulder at the closed door, then let her walk him out of the place. He was hungry and a beer would go down pretty damned well right now too. He had no doubts that she would know a good place for both.

* * *

><p>"No, it was back in 2002," Dean said, lifting his bottle and swallowing a mouthful of the beer it held. "Busted an arm and four ribs trying to wrestle it back into the tomb, and I stayed there until I could drive again."<p>

The restaurant's courtyard overlooked the city, high brick walls trapping the sunshine but rioting vines shading the diners from the heat and the single open side allowing the breeze to slip through. Looking around, Dean leaned back in his chair, savouring the beer, the recently finished steak and its thick, dark sauce, and feeling himself relaxed in the quiet of the place.

Ellie gave an exasperated snort as she looked at him. "You do realise the houdoun would've given you protection against the revenant if you'd asked?"

He ducked his head. He hadn't found that out until afterwards. Colette had stamped up and down her kitchen for twenty-five minutes, shaking her fists and yelling at him about his recklessness.

"Yeah, well, it, uh, all happened kind of fast," he told her. "Anyway, Colette's uncle was more'n happy to fill me in on the right way to do it."

"They still there?" she asked, picking up a glass of pale wine and sipping it.

"No," he said, his eyes darkening slightly. "After, uh, Katrina, they left and I haven't seen them since."

Ellie nodded, picking through her salad and spearing a tomato. "I saw Annie, a while ago," she said, flicking a fast glance at him. "She had an interesting New Orleans tale too."

The beer went down the wrong pipe and came back up, spraying over the brick paving as Dean struggled to breathe in while his lungs were trying to eject the liquid back out.

"You alright?" Ellie asked him, leaning over the table.

"Uh, yeah," he rasped, sucking down a deep breath and sitting up. He coughed again and wiped his eyes, looking at her warily. "Geez, isn't anyone discreet anymore?"

Ellie laughed.

* * *

><p><em><strong>NE-15 N, Nebraska<strong>_

_Yonder come Miss Rosie … How in the world did you know?  
>By the way she wears her apron, and the clothes she wore.<br>Umbrella on her shoulder, piece of paper in her hand;  
>She come to see the guv'nor; she want to free her man. <em>

Letting his breath out in a long, quiet exhale, Dean watched the headlights pick out the road, the beat pounding gently in his veins.

"We get everything?" he asked Ellie.

Curled up in the corner of the passenger side, between the seat back and the door, she nodded. "Except the blood."

"Will it work?"

"Yeah, it'll work," she said, the certainty in her voice surprising him.

_Let the Midnight Special shine a light on me  
>Let the Midnight Special shine a ever loving light on me.<em>

"You were gonna tell me where you found that spell," he said, glancing over at her.

"Was I?" she asked, hiding a yawn behind her hand. "I thought I did."

_If you're ever in Houston, well, you better do right;  
>You better not gamble, an' you better not fight <em>

She straightened up in the seat, turning to look at him. "Did Cas ever mention how Crowley managed to take over Hell?"

Dean shook his head, recognising the diversion but finding himself suddenly disinclined to keep hammering her about it. There could be any number of good reasons for her reticence on how she'd acquired the spell. "He said Crowley came to him, while I was, uh, while I was in Indiana. Cas was getting desperate about Raphael and Crowley suggested going halves in Purgatory's souls. But he didn't say how Crowley got the top job."

_Or the sheriff will grab you and the boys will bring you down.  
>The next thing you know, boy, oh, you're prison bound.<em>

She was silent for a moment and he glanced at her again. "Why?"

"No one knows what he did with the archdemons," she said, staring out through the windshield. "And he had to have done something."

"He's a sneaky, two-faced sonofabitch," Dean said. "Maybe he tricked them."

"That's just it," she told him. "It would need more than tricks. It would need power, of some kind."

Huffing out a breath, Dean looked back at the road. He didn't want to talk about Crowley. Or Cas, for that matter.

"Ellie … what happened, when the cage shut?" he asked, his voice deepening. "Why didn't you call Cas, come back?"

He heard her shift her position slightly.

"I was in Oregon, checking out a lead on what I thought was a case," she said. "I don't know how they found me, or even if it was me they were looking for, but we got attacked by demons, in the middle of nowhere." She snorted softly, but the sound didn't hold any amusement. "At least the angels came in handy then."

"One of them was killed but I didn't know how. When I went over it later on, I think that maybe one or more of the demons had angel swords. They hadn't seemed surprised that the angels were there."

She rubbed the inside of her wrist over her forehead. "The other one, Iophiel, put some kind of Enochian deflection spell over us both and we got away, just kept heading deeper into the mountains. I guess we were about sixty miles to the nearest town when Iophiel told me the cage had closed, both Lucifer and Michael locked away. He said Michael had used a different vessel. Then he left, without taking the spell off."

She turned her head away, looking into the darkness rushing by the truck. "I tried to pray to Cas. I guess he couldn't hear me or see me. It took me a while to walk to Bend and I got a car and drove to Bobby's."

Keeping his eyes fixed ahead, Dean turned what she'd said over in his mind. Demons with angel swords? Knowing, maybe that there were angels with her. It didn't sound random to him. He was sure that it hadn't seemed coincidental to her either. He felt a shiver slip through him. He didn't want to know about all the near-misses, he thought, but at the same time, he had to know. Had to know it all.

_Let the Midnight Special shine an ever-loving light on me._

* * *

><p>Ellie woke slowly, stretching out in the bed. She opened her eyes and looked around, the darkness dissolving in the pre-dawn light that marked the window in a rectangle of slowly lightening greys.<p>

Dean had moved the boxes, chests, luggage, excess furniture and cartons of books out when they'd returned from Nebraska, carrying them up to Bobby's attic with a minimum of grumbling. The bed, a couple of nightstands, a chest of drawers and a bookshelf were the only things occupying the room now, aside from its living occupants. She could see the wallpaper, a small floral pattern that had faded with the light. Karen had wanted children, she remembered Bobby saying. Had been planning their rooms.

Rolling over, she inched closer to the man beside her, her arm sliding over his chest, one leg over his thigh. There was a bad story for every hunter she'd ever met.

Dean's arm moved, curving around her, and she looked up, seeing his eyes open.

"I could get used to waking up like this," he said.

"I don't mind it myself," she replied, wriggling a little higher against him. "Did I wake you?"

"No." He shook his head, smiling a little as he caught her hand and moved it down his body. "But we could do something about what did."

* * *

><p>"Ellie!"<p>

Bobby waved a hand in front of his face, the fine black cloud of dust rising from the sander filling the air surrounding Ellie as she focussed on the front quarter panel.

"Ellie! Your phone!" Bobby yelled, swinging an arm in her peripheral vision.

The sander went off and she turned to him, pushing goggles up and mask down, the only clean spots on her face where they'd been. From head to foot, the rest of her was powder coated in the paint dust from the car.

"What?"

"Your phone," he said, handing it over as she set the sander on the bench behind her and took off her gloves.

"Thanks," she said to him, stepping out of the loose enclosure of hanging plastic dropsheets and walking out in the yard. Behind her, Dean flipped his sander back on and kept working.

"No, I didn't know," Ellie said, holding a hand against her free ear as she walked a little further from the noise. Bobby lifted a brow at her, and she shook her head, giving him a one-shouldered shrug.

"What? When?"

Didn't sound like good news, Bobby thought, glancing back at the workshop.

"Yeah. I'll be there," Ellie said. "First flight this evening."

She finished the call and ran a hand distractedly over her face, smearing the powdery black dust from one side to the other. Bobby wasn't paying attention to her appearance though.

"What?"

"Uh, that was Patrick," Ellie hesitated, looking back at the plastic sheets. "He said he'd been contacted by Penemue, about what's going on in Heaven."

"And?"

"And it seems like Cas isn't just smiting those on earth," she said, grimacing. "I need to see the Watcher."

Bobby turned to the workshop as well. "You just about finished the prep work in there?"

"I think so," Ellie said. "Another couple of hours."

"We'll get into it later, then," he said, pushing his cap up as he rubbed his fingers over one brow. "I gotta couple of people I can call, mebbe get a confirmation on this."

She nodded, putting the phone into her pocket and pulling up the mask again.

* * *

><p>"Cas smited – smote – whatever – Raphael when he first took on all those monster souls," Dean argued, moving slightly closer to the woman beside him. "And good riddance, so why's it a problem now?"<p>

""Raphael is – was – the arch who opened the way into Heaven for souls," Ellie told him. "There's going to be trouble with the Veil if they haven't found a replacement – or if all the possible replacements have been killed as well."

Dean made a noise in the back of his throat. "You're telling me that on top of an insane angel with the power of God, who might've wiped out most of the angel population, we're gonna see ghost problems, times a hundred?"

"Times a million," Bobby corrected him sourly. "The Veil's the line between the three planes. It gets full – those souls get antsy for their just rewards – who knows what'll happen."

"It's not just that," Ellie said slowly. "The psychopomps say Purgatory's empty."

"Reapers?" Sam asked, his brow wrinkling up uncertainly as he looked at Bobby.

"Soul guides," Bobby said, shaking his head. "Reapers, sparrows, crows, ravens … all of 'em."

"So, we're really out of time," Dean said, looking from Bobby to Ellie. "We gotta do this."

"You can't wait for me to find out more," Ellie agreed, setting her glass on the table. They'd finished fairing off the car at dusk, had cleaned up and eaten and she'd booked a flight from Sioux Falls to Chicago and from there to Rome for ten o'clock. She could fly to Cairo from Italy in the morning, but she wanted to see the exorcist first. Bobby's contacts had confirmed what Patrick had told her, but she still needed to talk to Penemue. The possible – and probable – impacts on Heaven would be enormous. "I don't know how long I'll be."

"Doesn't matter anyway, I mean, does it?" Sam asked, looking at his brother. "All those people … what else was in Purgatory, aside from the monster souls?"

Ellie looked at him, her expression tight. "Something God thought was better locked away."

"We'll do the binding for Crowley tonight," Bobby said. "We've got what we need."

* * *

><p>"Stay until morning," Dean said against her neck, his breath sending a shiver through her nerves.<p>

Ellie turned from the car door, her arms slipping around him. "You're going to be busy most of the night anyway."

He shrugged. "I still want to wake up with you."

She swallowed, the unexpected tenderness in his voice stirring her. "Next time."

He frowned at her. "When?"

She sighed. "Not long. I don't know when exactly. But I should be able to get back in a week or two." She looked at his expression, reading his dissatisfaction with that vague answer. "Or depending on where you guys are, I'll meet you wherever."

He nodded slowly, realising that nothing was going to be as simple as he'd hoped for. He didn't want her to leave at all. "You were right. This isn't going to be easy to figure out."

"It's not just what's happened in Heaven, Dean," she said, the small crease appearing between her brows. "The Watchers have older knowledge than we do."

"Yeah." Dean acknowledged reluctantly. "You gonna be contactable?"

She thought of the desert and nodded. "Most of the time? Yeah, I think so."

"I'll let you know how we do with Crowley, and uh, Death."

She looked at him, reaching up to put her arms around his neck. He leaned down, capturing her mouth. The kiss was just a reminder, a promise. They were too attuned to each other right now to let it linger or deepen too much. He held her for a moment, not ready to let go.

"Don't get yourself killed."

She nodded against his neck, then let go and stepped back, turning away to slide behind the wheel. He shut the door and backed away as she started the engine, watching her drive out of the yard. When her taillights disappeared around the corner, he turned and walked back to the house.

Logically, rationally, it made sense. She had a lot of contacts, in more fields than he, Sam and Bobby could round up between them. But he wished she'd stayed. Everything that'd been happening since Cas'd opened Purgatory had been crap from beginning to end. And it looked very much as if it was only going to get worse.

* * *

><p><em>What the heart has once owned and had, it shall never lose.<em>

_~ Henry Ward Beecher_


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